How the Barefoot Gentleman Pursued the Free Woman
by Martin III
Summary: Post-TLA. Felix goes to Prox to find Karst and Agatio, despite his fear that Sheba will hate him for it. But Sheba will be the least of his problems, as Felix's search for love threatens to end in tragedy. Rated T for violence and Felix's heavy cursing.
1. Chapter 1: Next Stop, Prox

Author's Notes:

Yep, finally the follow-up to "Of Gods and Mortals". Don't feel that you need to read that one to understand this story, though. Basically, "Of Gods and Mortals" just drops some hints of the troubles Felix will be facing in this story. It is a quick read, and an enjoyable one(according to the reviews, anyway), but it's not essential.

In general, a new chapter of this fic will be published every two weeks. I will warn you all in advance of any breaks in the schedule. Due to the shortness of chapter 1, chapter 2 will appear one week from now. Both praise and constructive criticism are, of course, much appreciated.

By the way, be sure to check out the new Golden Sun discussion forum The Land of Ice and Fire, which covers everything and everyone Prox-related. I'll most likely request reader input on certain plot points in the forum, so watch for that.

The milieu and characters of this fanfic are property of Nintendo and Camelot. This story is set shortly after The Lost Age.

* * *

How the Barefoot Gentleman Pursued the Free Woman

plot and script - Martin III

* * *

- Chapter 1: Next Stop, Prox -

Looking down at Sheba's little hand clinging to his as they stood together on the edge of the ship, Felix thought, _This must be my punishment for all the evil I condoned while I was traveling with Saturos and Menardi._

The wind blew harshly into his face, making his eyes water. _Even a grunt like me can appreciate the poetic justice. The same kid I helped abduct from her sheltered and happy existence, the same kid I almost brought to a painful death at the bottom of Venus Lighthouse, has become a bigger pain in my ass than I ever thought I'd have to deal with._

_ And now comes the worst of it. Unless I betray my own heart, I'm going to make her hate me for the rest of her life._

Sheba pointed. "Look, Felix! You can see Prox from here now!"

He squinted. "Yep."

_Maybe I should just tell her now, tell her the real reason we're going to Prox. I'm not doing either one of us any favors by dragging this out._

Sheba looked up at him, her mushroom cap of hair blowing wildly in the breeze, yet not once getting caught in her eyes. "It's almost like a second home for you, isn't it?"

_Poor kid. She thinks she knows me._ "You could say that," he answered, a lump in his throat.

The truth was, Prox was his only true home now. He'd known that when he snuck into Vale and raided Sol Sanctum. In one moment of illumination, he had realized that Saturos and Menardi didn't have to hold his parents hostage to make him do those things. He'd have done them anyway, to save Prox. The place where he'd finally become a man. ...No, more than a place. Prox was the people who had showed him how to fight, who had given him the liberation of being able to stand up for himself and others, the power to be something other than helpless. The people who had shown him the glory of being strong.

He belonged in Prox. He wasn't sure that he would choose to live anywhere else even if Karst turned out to...

Felix felt a familiar tugging at the edge of his brain. His expression turned to a hard frown.

_Don't mind-read me, Sheba. I'm not in the mood._

He must have come off pretty harsh, because Sheba walked away from him without saying anything. That made him feel a bit guilty, as he'd never really discouraged her from reading his mind. He probably should have, but he usually didn't care if people knew exactly what he thought.

Perhaps it was better that she started to hate him now. It would make the blow easier on her.

New footsteps sounded on the deck behind him. "Is something wrong, Felix?"

It was Piers. Had Felix given the word, they could have dropped him off in Lemuria first. But he had wanted the old man around; aside from Kraden, there was no one he relied on more for advice. He trusted the wisdom of the elder of Prox more, but the elder wouldn't understand his emotional loyalties. He could already guess that the elder would tell him to simply be true to himself, that Sheba's emotional reactions were her own affair.

"You could say that," Felix answered. "Piers, I... You've probably guessed the real reason why I'm returning to Prox, haven't you?"

Piers regarded him, one eye squinting while the brow of the other eye lifted. "It wasn't to help the village recover from the advance of Gaia Falls?"

"Well... yes, that was a reason, but..." It would have been the main reason, except that Felix wasn't the sort who rebuilt things. He'd give it a shot, of course, but he couldn't change his nature.

"Yes?" Piers's tone was not prodding; he was only reassuring Felix that he was still listening.

"...Never mind." He wasn't ready to tell him.

"Perhaps we'll talk about it later?"

"Yeah."

Of course, there was no more time for "later". The ship would land outside Prox in just minutes. From there, he would simply let the chips fall where they may.


	2. Chapter 2: Everybody Off

- Chapter 2: Everybody Off -

Standing in the snow outside Prox(igniting the lighthouses had stopped the deterioration of Weyard, but it would be many years before the weather rebalanced itself), Felix procrastinated a moment longer. They had already dropped Mia off in Imil and Ivan in Kalay, but this was where he bid goodbye to Jenna, Garet, Isaac, and Piers. And hopefully, Sheba.

"Everyone," he said aloud. "We'll be here for a few days, but I think I should let you all know that when you leave, I'll be staying here in Prox. You can take the ship back with you to Vale."

Most of them appeared startled to silence. Isaac spoke up, "Somehow, I was expecting this. It isn't because you think you won't be welcome in Vale, is it?"

"No."

"Then I guess there isn't anything more I can say." He held out his hand. "We'll miss you. If there's anything you need -"

"Likewise," Felix said, shaking his hand.

"What are you talking about!" Sheba broke in, storming up to the two of them and grabbing Felix's cloak. "Felix, you can't... You can't just leave your sister! Not to mention your friends!"

Felix shook his head. "Jenna's a grown woman now. Besides, she has our parents with her."

"It's still not right! Don't you care about -"

"It's okay, Sheba," Jenna interrupted. "Felix is old enough... old enough to be on his own now. I wasn't expecting Prox, but I knew he wouldn't be staying in Vale. He..." She broke off in a sob and embraced her brother, hiding her moist eyes against his shoulder. "Damn it, Felix, why did you have to spring this on us at the last minute?"

"I'm sorry, Jenna." He held her as reassuringly as he could, though his sister's body felt like a stranger's to him. It always had, ever since he'd returned to Vale after three years in Prox. "But I know you. If I'd told you earlier, you'd have just argued with me the whole trip."

"Yeah... I guess I can see how you'd think that," she sniffled. "Damn it, Felix, I just got you back... I'm going to miss you."

"Don't talk like that. We'll still see each other now and then. We have a flying ship, remember?"

"Nnn," she grunted, obviously not convinced. She was sensible enough to know that though there would be a visit every five years or so, Felix had his own life. He wouldn't be wasting it making routine visits to Vale.

"Look, I promise I'll see you within the next year, okay?" He made the promise for Jenna's sake, but when he thought about it, he liked the idea for himself as well. It wouldn't be right to say a final goodbye to his family before he'd settled down in Prox.

"Don't make me promises that you won't keep, Felix..."

"I wouldn't do that to you." He gently pushed her away and gave her a light noogie. "...dummy."

It was a weak attempt to make light of their parting, but it sufficed. "Jerk," Jenna rejoined with a sad nod. "You _better_ visit."

Sheba folded her arms with a contemptuous air, eyes narrowing in displeasure. "What about me?" she protested. "Are you really going to abandon me, Felix?"

"You can go with him, Sheba," Jenna suggested. "I'd really miss you, but if that's what you want..."

Sheba looked over at her, and it immediately hit Felix how groundless his worry was. Of _course_ Sheba would stay with Jenna. The two of them were almost like sisters; as attached as she was to Felix, Sheba would never choose him over Jenna. The emotional connection between them was real, not just gratitude for his jumping off a lighthouse to save her from danger that he himself was partially responsible for.

"Jenna..." Sheba smiled and wrapped her arms around her surrogate big sister. "I... I'm sorry. I'll really miss you, too, but..."

_Shit. Does the universe really hate me this much?_

"...I just can't leave Felix. You're my best friend, but Felix... Felix helped me see what I'm supposed to do, how I'm supposed to use my power to help people. Without him... I don't think I'd know what to do with myself anymore. I'm not ready to figure everything out on my own! I'm sure I will be someday, but... Do you understand?"

Jenna nodded. "I think so. If you want to help people, like you said... Then it's probably better if you go with Felix."

"That's not a good idea," Felix tried. "This is a town of Proxians, Sheba; you'll be an outsider. And you know how boring I am by myself. Don't forget the weather, either. Honestly, Sheba, you have no idea what it's like to live here year round."

"It's not like I've been living in a palace these past months," Sheba said with a roll of her eyes. She took him by the hand. "C'mon, I won't complain so long as you're with me. We'll be outsiders together, like usual."

He opened his mouth to protest again, but then he saw that not just Sheba, but everyone was giving him a look that suggested he'd have to be the world's biggest jerk to not let her stay with him.

"...Fine." _Why fight the inevitable? I've earned years of suffering, and the universe is apparently determined to see that I get it._

* * *

Puelle was pleased to see them back, of course, having been unhappy about their leaving in the first place. Felix still didn't know how he felt about the Proxians regarding him as a hero; after all, he'd let Saturos and Menardi die. Still, that was just one failure. Maybe he could accept being called a hero if it turned out that he had been able to save Karst and Agatio.

Once they'd discussed ways they could help out in Prox, Felix said, "There is another thing I wanted to check on. Have you found Karst and Agatio yet?"

Puelle raised his bright eyebrows. "They're dead, are they not?"

"Then you've recovered their bodies?"

"Ah, I understand," he said, though his expression remained a bit confused. "Well, Mars Lighthouse is still a dangerous place. It's nothing that myself and a couple hand-picked warriors couldn't handle, but it's too much trouble just to recover two bodies, when it is better to let them rest there, with Mars Lighthouse serving as a monument to their sacrifice."

"What!" Jenna practically screamed in horror. It was probably the apparent disrespect for the dead that struck her hardest, but faced with Puelle's unblinking look, she stammered out, "But... the stench!"

He shook his head. "The bodies of Fire Clan members will not decompose within Mars Lighthouse. They should be lying there unchanged from the moment you saw them last. ...You left them in dignified positions, correct?"

"Yes," Felix said, recalling with pain how he had straightened Karst's leg and placed her shivering arms over her torso. The leg he'd help break, the arms he'd help mangle. It was the Wise One's fault, but he was still responsible. "Still, at some point I would like to make a final visit to their resting place. I haven't really paid my respects."

Sheba scowled. "You don't owe those two anything, Felix. They betrayed you!"

"And I betrayed Saturos and Menardi," he retorted. "Loyalties don't matter. It's what they fought for that counts."

She folded her arms. "And what they fought for was killing you and Isaac."

He didn't argue further. Sheba was never one to change her mind.

* * *

The lot of them stayed at the inn for three days while they helped with clearing away snow, repairing houses damaged by bad freezes, and otherwise undoing the damage wrought by the advance of Gaia Falls. To his credit, Isaac realized the hollowness of the gesture.

"This destruction won't end when we leave. All this terrible weather is going on year round," Isaac said to Felix, head lowered with guilt. "At least you'll be staying here to help, but... What good does it do for the rest of us to lend a hand for three days?"

"None whatsoever," Felix acknowledged. "You'll be doing plenty to restore Vale once you get back there. Home is where you should be helping people first, anyway."

Thankfully, Sheba didn't complain too much about the work. It helped that she was allowed to take a break whenever she wanted, of course, but the girl clearly had a great deal of pride.

And Felix finally took the opportunity to share his dilemma with Piers, to an extent.

"Piers..." he said as they were clearing ice from a roof. "What do I do if after you guys leave, Sheba changes her mind about wanting to stay with me?"

Piers smiled. "That will never happen."

"What makes you so sure?"

He shook his head. "Sheba is too stubborn, and too obsessed with you."

"What if I do something to change that?"

Piers turned and gave him a look. "Felix, if you don't want Sheba to be with you, just tell her."

"That's not what I meant," he protested. "I want her to be with me - I mean, I don't, but not in the way you made it sound like, and besides, I would never... What I mean is -" He threw his hands up in the air. "Look, I just don't want her to be hurt."

"That's good to hear," Piers said, turning back to his work. "But I'm not sure I understand what you _do_ want."

Felix thought for a moment. _I'd rather not tell him about Karst, but... Wait._ "Look... What if you guys say goodbye to me and Sheba, but keep the ship here for another 24 hours, in case she decides to go back with you?"

"That sounds reasonable. You'll have to ask Isaac, of course."

His last move before seeing his friends off was to speak with Puelle about housing arrangements. Naturally, Sheba accompanied him when they went.

"Is Menardi's house still available?"

"Hey!" Sheba protested. "I'm not staying in any house where that bully lived!"

"Then you can leave on the ship with the others. That's your alternative."

"Geez, Felix," Sheba said, staring at him with offended eyes. "What are you so mad about?"

In truth, he wasn't mad at all. He was just hoping to convince her not to stay with him.

"You don't have to stay there, Felix," Puelle said. "I can imagine that place has unpleasant memories for you of your first stay here. For all you've done for Prox, we can keep you in a decent room at the inn until a suitable house is built for the two of you."

"No. I refuse to live on charity." With only a brief side glance at Sheba, he continued, "And if Menardi's house is available, I owe it to her surviving family to at least keep the place from falling apart. That's where I'm staying. Sheba can stay where she pleases."

There was only a brief uncomfortable silence before Sheba said, "I'm staying with you, Felix. It's not the home that really counts; it's who's in it."

* * *

After they'd bid farewell to Jenna, Isaac, Garet, and Piers, Felix wasted little time. He wanted to know the truth - and it was time for Sheba to know the truth as well. Once he and Sheba had their things set up at Menardi's house, he said flatly, "I'm going to Mars Lighthouse now. You can come if you want."

She gave him an odd look but followed his lead and bundled on her warmest clothing. An hour later, they were trudging towards the bright beacon still encircled by heavy drifts of snow.

The going was slow. Sheba's feet(and therefore, the soles of her boots) were small, so she tended to fall into snow drifts. Being too short to climb out herself, she could only wait while Felix silently pulled her back up. She apologized each time, which Felix found a bit absurd. It wasn't her fault.

Sheba's only fault was that she wanted to be with him, and that wasn't so much her choice as it was her fate. Sheba would always be with him, it seemed, as a constant reminder of his sins.

They were just a few hundred meters from the Lighthouse when Sheba stepped on a patch of ice and slipped. Felix gave her a hand to steady her as she got back up, and the little goddess asked the question that must have been on her mind the whole trip, "Why are you in such a hurry to pay your respects, anyway? Puelle said, their bodies aren't going anywhere."

He sighed, the air freezing his breath. "It's not just that. I didn't say anything because I didn't want the others to get involved, but... If the power of Mars Lighthouse revived my parents, it sure should have revived two powerful members of the Mars clan."

Sheba's eyes widened. "Why didn't I think of that? But... do you think just the two of us can handle them?"

He shook his head. "We're not here to fight. Karst and Agatio aren't our enemies."

"What! They tried to kill us!" She sounded more distraught and confused than angry. "What do you mean by that, anyway - that you don't want the others to get involved? What are we doing here?"

As she often did when she anticipated that a question of hers has a very complicated answer, Sheba began reading his mind. He did not try to evade her probe, but willingly focused his thoughts on his feelings for Karst.

As she read his mind, Sheba's face contorted with greater confusion, then dismay. When finished, she took a step back from him. "No," she said, looking up at him with something almost like fear.

Felix sighed, both relieved and ashamed to have the truth out there at last. "Sheba," he said with an apologetic tone(though in truth he wasn't sorry at all) and held out his palm to her.

"Get away from me!" she screamed, and bolted from him.

"Sheba!" He darted after her, but she used her power to stir up a whirlwind behind her, blowing a miniature snowstorm into his face. Caught off-guard, he fell back a step and held his hands in front of his face, utterly blinded.

It took only a minute for the snowstorm to dissipate and for Felix to brush the heavy flakes from his eyes, but by the time he could see again, Sheba was nowhere in sight. Only an endless cascade of white stretched on in every direction. Any footsteps she'd left had apparently been swept away by her little windstorms.

He called her name at the top of his lungs. No answer.

_Oh no. Oh gods, please, no._

He ran through the snow in the direction he thought she'd gone, nothing but desperation fueling his hope that he could find her.

Night would fall in a few hours, but even that was just the beginning of his fears. Sheba still believed that she was a goddess, that she could not die. The little blond adept didn't even know she would need shelter from the sub-zero cold.


	3. Chapter 3: Looking for Someone

Author's note: Ahoy. Given the shortage of reviews thus far, I thought I should mention that this is not an easy fic to write; the characterizations are very tricky. I could really use input on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. Thanks. Now, on with the story.

- Chapter 3: Looking for Someone -

_How did this all begin_, Felix wondered as he trudged through the snow.

It couldn't have been back in his captivity in Prox. He and Karst had been nothing more than friends when he was there, and even that had ended when Menardi had found the two of them together. After Karst was dragged off by her sister, he'd snuck off to their house and peeped in through a window. Inside he saw Karst weeping as Menardi gave her the beating of a lifetime, screaming at her that she'd get worse if she ever talked to "those freaks from Vale" again. When he went to look for her the next day, Karst gave him a furious glare. Understanding, he'd walked away and did not go near her again.

It wasn't until over two years later that he saw her again, at Madra. He recognized her, of course. She certainly looked different: hair trimmed and styled so that it framed her heart-shaped face, figure more toned and developed, her modest clothes traded for a multi-piece outfit that revealed the smooth curves of her waist and the hard pink scales of her shoulders. Not the girl he'd known before, but a woman. Even so, as a Proxian in Madra she certainly stood out, and when he overheard her talking about Menardi, his suspicions of her identity changed to certainty.

What amazed him was that, after all those years, she recognized him. Not at first sight, but the instant she heard the name Felix she knew who he was, even expressed surprise that she hadn't recognized him before. How? He'd changed over the years too, and in the course of his travels his face had become coated with dirt and dried blood. He wouldn't have been surprised if his own parents didn't recognize him, the way he looked then. Yet Karst did.

It didn't matter. Sheba had cruelly taunted Karst about Menardi's death, but Felix couldn't blame her for what happened. Even if she hadn't, and even if he had told Karst who he was when he confronted her about Menardi's death, the way he should have... Any which way you cut it, they would have been enemies. Karst wanted to kill Isaac. He felt sorry for Karst's loss - he'd lost his sister too, for three years - but Menardi had had it coming to her for holding an innocent girl like Sheba prisoner. He had no doubt that what Isaac had done had been in self-defense; he couldn't let Karst kill him for that.

Yet at the top of Jupiter Lighthouse, where she and Agatio betrayed him... He didn't want to fight her. He _did_ fight her, for the lives of his parents, for the life of his sister, for the lives of Sheba and Piers, for the lives of everyone who would die if Karst and Agatio were as unsuccessful at lighting Mars Lighthouse as he thought they would be. But he hated doing it.

Even then, he wondered why. As adolescents they had been only casual friends, not close at all. As adults they had always been enemies. If he should have felt anything for her at all, it was anger: anger at her for betraying him, for threatening those he loved, for deriding his worth as a warrior. Showing her how grossly she had underestimated him by decorating the top of Jupiter Lighthouse with her blood should have brought him nothing but satisfaction. Watching her lying helpless before him, at his mercy, he should have felt only triumph.

But something was wrong about the whole thing.

And at Mars Lighthouse, he realized what it was. Though enemies by circumstance, in essence, they were kindred spirits. She was fighting to save the people she cared about, just as he was. Both of them were warriors at heart; they delighted in shedding blood and proving their strength to any who threatened them... and he wondered, when she'd taunted him that he couldn't possibly have killed Menardi, was she really mocking him, or had it been a come-on, a challenge for him to prove her wrong? In that meeting at Madra, had the sight of him aroused her interest just as the sight of her had aroused his? Had it all been foreplay up until the point where he stopped her from killing Isaac?

He realized, then, what he could have had, but it was too late. All he could do was take her in his arms and feel the warmth fading from her. He wanted to hold her until the end, but they needed to light the lighthouse. And to let her see it lit before she died was a better gift for her.

It wasn't until months after that he realized that the lighthouse which had revived his parents should also have revived Karst and Agatio. But when he did, he knew what he had to do.

He had to confront Karst with how he felt. Even if it meant the others would ostracize him. Even if it meant Sheba would hate him. Even if Karst herself would spurn his feelings. Regardless of the consequences, he could not allow his heart to remain silent.

_That's what I thought, anyway. But if Sheba dies... Damn it, why didn't I tell her about my feelings for Karst before we left? Why didn't I see that this could happen?_

He reminded himself that self-recriminations would be of no help to Sheba. He had to find her, and to do that he needed to focus on...

_On what?_ He looked around, seeing nothing but mounds of snow and the last glimmerings of the setting sun. _At this point, any direction I search in is just as good as another. Damn it, I don't even know where the hell I am anymore! Why didn't I think to go get help finding Sheba? Why did I have to panic and run after her like a complete idiot!_

Distracted by his thoughts, Felix misstepped and sank up to his waist in a snow bank, hands reaching out to stop himself and pressing into the surface layer. Shocked by the chill of the melting snow against his wrists, he could feel tears running from his eyes only to freeze on his cheeks.

_Damn it... It was me who betrayed Vale and helped kidnap my own sister, me who dragged an innocent little "goddess" into the mess with lighting the lighthouses, me who struck down Karst and Agatio. Torment me all you want, but let Sheba live! She doesn't deserve this, damn it!_

He pushed himself back up and moved on. Even if it was hopeless, he wasn't going to give up. Better to die in a futile gesture than the injustice of his living on when Sheba had died.

A sound made him stop in his tracks. _Did someone just... sneeze?_

He ran in the direction of the sound, legs pulsing with new energy. In a moment, he could make a little purple stripe, and his heart pleaded that it was Sheba's robes and not his mind playing tricks on him. As he got closer, he slowed his steps so as not to frighten her. Little by little, to his relief, the little purple stripe bloomed into a seated human figure with blond hair. It seemed that the gods had answered his prayer.

She was facing away from him, shivering with the cold, so he was able to approach without her noticing. He laid a hand on her shoulder. She started at the contact and dove away from him.

He was ready this time, however, planting a firm hold on her shoulder and, when she tried to slip free, forcing her face down into the snow. "Stop it, Sheba," he said. "I'm trying to help you."

"Let me go!" she screeched. "You're hurting me! Let go!"

"No." Her struggles were weak, and she was probably worn out from trudging through the snow, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that she was playing possum.

"Why can't you just leave me alone? I hate you, you hear me? I hate you!"

"I know," he said, unexpectedly finding a lump in his throat at hearing that statement. Sheba went limp beneath him, panting for breath, seemingly spent from her outburst. Satisfied that she was too worn out to give him trouble, he pulled her out of the snow and hefted her up bridal style. "I know you hate me. But are you really willing to let yourself freeze to death just to spite me?"

He said that without thinking, having momentarily forgotten that Sheba didn't believe she _could_ die, but she said nothing to contradict him. She just lay quietly in his arms as he carried her in roughly the direction Prox lay in. After wandering in search of Sheba for so long, he had lost much of his bearings, but he had been careful to maintain at least a vague sense of which way was back.

Sheba was still shivering and sneezing. He was tempted to look at her face, both to see what shape she was in and to gauge how sincerely she hated him, but he forced himself to stay focused on the path ahead. Darkness had fallen, and if he didn't get back to Prox soon, Sheba might not last the night.

* * *

After trudging through the snow for an hour, Felix's legs were beginning to feel like lead. His limbs pleaded with him to collapse into the soft cushy snow and rest, but he allowed them no relief. No feeling whatsoever remained in his numbed face.

"Felix?" Sheba said, her voice drained, whole body quivering with cold. "I... I d-d-don't -" She sneezed. "...h-hate you."'

"That's nice," he replied. "But it doesn't mean jack shit if you die out here because of me."

"I-It's not -"

"Stop talking. You'll make yourself get worse." This was a lie, of course; he just didn't want to have to listen to her sneeze-punctuated chatter.

He noticed a fading tingle._ Did Sheba just mind-read me?_ Thanks to the numbing effect of the cold, he hadn't noticed until after the fact.

To check, he glanced down at her and saw a massive scowl on her face. "Real n-n-nice, Felix," she said. "I was -"

"Just shut your mouth, okay? Please."

Blessedly, she complied, though he feared that was out of weakness rather than politeness. He carried her on for another hundred steps before a second blessing appeared: a glimmering light that could only have come from Prox.

* * *

An hour later, they were seated in Menardi's house with blankets wrapped around themselves and their feet planted in a wooden tub filled with water heated by Mercury psynergy. The village healer hovered over Sheba, examining her in between her violent sneezes. When he couldn't bear the suspense any longer, Felix said, "Has she come down with something serious?"

The healer opened her mouth to answer, but Sheba cut her off, "She thinks I'll be fine. It's just an - achoo! - common cold." With an angry glare, the healer turned and struck Sheba across the face. "Ow!"

"Never presume to speak for your elders, girl." She gathered her things and headed for the door, pausing only to hand Felix some leaves. "Keep her warm, and the illness should pass within four full rotations of the sun. For good measure, give her some tea with these mixed in."

He just nodded, but Sheba screeched as she went out the door, "Get back here, you witch! You -"

"That 'witch' just got out of bed in the middle of the night to tend to you, Sheba."

"And that makes it - achoo! - makes it okay for her to hit me!"

"If you want to live in a place, you have to accept their rules."

"No way! I'll never accept injustice! I -" She broke off with a remarkably loud sneeze.

"Just shut up, okay? Gods of Weyard, you're a pain in the rear."

"So you've told me." She wiped her nose. "Half a dozen times."

"Well, you'll be happy to know that you don't have to stay here with me." He adjusted his blanket around himself; unlike Sheba, he had adapted to the weather in Prox enough to survive half a day out in the snow, but that didn't mean he _liked_ the cold. "Isaac's ship is still in port. You can leave with Jenna and the others in the morning."

There was a moment of silence. "Felix... How can you feel that way for that psycho, anyway?"

"Hey, she may have a temper like a volcano, but she's still my sister."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." She sneezed. "Answer the question."

"You're asking me to explain the 'how' of love?"

"No, just how you can feel anything for her besides hating her guts."

He sighed. "It always amazes me, Sheba. You can read minds, yet you have no understanding or sympathy for anyone. Look, how would you feel if someone killed your sis- Well, how would you feel if someone killed Jenna?"

"Heartbroken, I guess. But I would never - achoo! - never murder anyone, especially someone who had nothing to do with it."

"Nothing to do with it? Sheba, I was there when Menardi was killed. I could have stopped them. For all Karst knows, I might have helped them do it."

"Okay, but I wouldn't kill you even if you had."

"Fair enough," he said with another sigh. "Just understand that it's a bit different from my perspective. You don't want to know what I'd do to anyone who would kill my sister." He stood up, stepped out of the tub, and began toweling off his legs. "Karst and Agatio fought for the same thing we did, you know. They deserve a second chance."

"You just don't get it, Felix. Karst's a whacked-out, screwed-up, blood-crazed psycho! No number of second chances is going to change that."

"You don't know her."

There was another silence as Felix slipped his socks on.

"What if she tries to kill you again?" Sheba demanded.

"She won't. We saved her life and all of Prox, remember?"

"What if she rejects you?"

"I'll drink my sorrows into oblivion, have a massive hangover in the morning, and then man up and get over it."

"What if..." She stopped to think, making another sneeze in the meantime. "What if you find her and you don't know what to say?"

"Yeah, I was worried about that," he admitted. "So I planned out what I'd say if nothing came to mind. I'll just tell her that I'm glad to see she's alive, that I was thinking of her wish to see Mars Lighthouse lit before she died the whole time I was fighting to make that happen, and that I'm sorry we ended up fighting, because I think we both want the same thing. That we have the same desires in our hearts." There was a significant silence. "I'll make that tea for you now."

"...I'm not leaving with Isaac and the others tomorrow. I'm still staying with you."

"I won't give up Karst just to make you happy, Sheba."

"I'm not... ah... ah... CHOO!" She wiped her nose again. "I'm not asking you to. That's the whole point."

He stared at her. "You don't mean that."

"Yes, I do. As soon as I can I'll get my own place to live in Prox so I don't have to be around _her_, but I still want to be around you."

This, he couldn't figure out. Was she really this stubborn? With the weather, and the people, and Karst, Sheba was bound to be miserable in Prox. He couldn't mean that much to her.

"I'm going back to Mars Lighthouse first thing tomorrow," he said. He had already been impatient to learn if Karst was still alive, and talking about it didn't help matters.

"I'll come with -"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You need to stay here and get well. Besides, you already delayed me once."

"I'm sorry."

"No; it wasn't your fault. I should have told you why we were there before we left. But I don't want to risk having you freeze to death again. Understand?"

"Yeah..."

* * *

_Why the blazes did it take me so long to search here?_ Felix wondered as he walked through the stately halls of Mars Lighthouse. _Was I that afraid... of finding Karst's corpse? Of seeing her cold and lifeless because of me?_

He couldn't put much faith in that theory. Wasn't it obvious once Mars Lighthouse had revived his parents that it would do the same for Karst and Agatio? It should have occurred to him much sooner. At some level, it must have already occurred to him. So the question became: Why was he so afraid of finding her alive? Was it shame?

Or perhaps it was intimidation. After all, Karst was a very beautiful woman, and he had never so much as held the hand of any girl besides his sister. He hadn't yet been interested in the fairer sex when he was taken from Vale, and Proxian women held no attraction for him. Proxians were simply too different... almost inhuman. Karst was the only one who stirred the least bit of interest from him. Since leaving Prox, he'd met other attractive women, such as Mia and Kushinada, but they were all either spoken for or had dull, uninteresting personalities. When he saw Karst at Madra, it was almost like his hormones were sparking to life for the first time.

_Maybe... maybe I'm afraid of confronting her as a would-be lover. Maybe the only way I'm comfortable relating to a woman is by fighting her._

But Felix was never one to run from his fears - not consciously. He took the long hall to the room with the dragons at a light sprint. Coming to the top of the stairs, he saw the lit torches. He saw the two dragon heads.

Between them he saw: nothing.

He frantically searched the room, combing every last inch for any sign of Karst and Agatio. Finding nothing, he sat down on the floor of the chamber, resting his arms on his knees.

_It's funny... This is just what I expected to find, but now that I've found it, it doesn't seem to make sense. Unless Puelle was wrong, and scavengers -_

_ Felix shuddered. No. There would at least be bones left if that were true. But if Karst and Agatio are alive, why didn't they return to Prox? Could the Wise One have finished them off? ...No; from everything he said and did, I doubt he'd care whether the two of them live or die. But why would Karst and Agatio let everyone think them dead? Unless..._

It hit him like a lightning bolt. "No," he breathed. "Oh gods, no. Why didn't I think of -" He scrambled to his feet and ran for the lighthouse exit, cursing himself every step of the way. "Stupid... thrice-damned... lovesick fool!"

* * *

Felix didn't stop running until he reached the place where the Lemurian ship was "docked", but he was still a good 50 seconds too late. The ship had lifted off and was moving over the Proxian snow towards the northern seas.

"Isaac!" he hollered at the top of his burning lungs, still sprinting after the ship against the screaming protests of his legs. "Isaac! Stop!"

His shouts were rewarded by the appearance of Garet's head over the bow.

_Yes. Thank the gods. He heard me._ "Garet!" he screamed, frantically making gestures to turn around. "Turn the ship back! Turn back!"

Garet squinted at him a moment. Then, smiling, he waved at him.

_No no no you stupid asshole, I'm not fucking waving goodbye, I want you to fucking turn the goddamn fucking ship around!_ "Garet, turn back! TURN! BACK!"

Still waving, Garet shouted something at him that he couldn't make out. Then he turned and walked away.

"Garet... you stupid... piece of..."

Felix's foot slid on a patch of ice, and he collapsed onto his hands and knees, exhausted. Each breath felt like a dagger coming up from his lungs. He was too late. The ship was over the river now, passing between the mountains. Out of reach.

_It's all my fault... My stupid blindness... Isaac..._

_

* * *

_

"Isaac," he heard Piers call. "I've found a problem."

He adjusted his grip over the wheel. "Are you serious? I scoped out every last corner of the ship yesterday while we were just sitting here twiddling our thumbs, and there was nothing wrong then."

"Of course," Piers acknowledged. "This is why we make routine checks every time we take off, isn't it? There's a minor dent in the starboard hull, in the second storage room. Could be from wood rot, I suppose. It's bad enough to let in water if we take to the seas again, though."

"Alright," he sighed. "Guess it's up to me to fix it. Can you take the wheel for a while?"

"Certainly."

Isaac let out another sigh as he headed below decks. Despite his suspected age, despite the fact that this ship was supposedly designed by his people, Piers knew nothing of how to repair it. Garet could repair most anything, but he was liable to break something else in the process. That left him, the only other guy on the ship, to do the job. Already he missed being able to split that chore with Felix and Ivan.

In fact, Isaac would be relieved when this trip was over in general. Though his companions had agreed that he should lead the group, it seemed like Ivan was the only one who ever listened to him. Felix's group always deferred to Felix, Garet ridiculed his decisions as often as not, and Mia... Maybe it was unfair to say this, seeing as they would have died many times over without her help, but the girl was nothing but trouble.

_Guess they didn't want a leader so much as someone to be responsible for everything. Oh well. It's almost over now._

Finding the dent in the hull, he frowned. It was definitely not just a case of wood rot. Probably one of the others had done it while horsing around, and Piers was either covering for them or just not observant enough to recognize damage caused by force.

Either way, it had to be fixed. He took a lantern and headed to the next storage room, where the spare boards and nails were kept.

As he opened the door to the storage room, Isaac thought he saw something moving in the darkness, briefly illuminated by the light of the lantern. It was a slight enough movement and fleeting enough glimpse that it was most likely no more than his imagination, but having a healthy aversion to rats, he stepped into the room slowly and cautiously, his lantern held as far in front of him as his arm could reach.

A sharp and unpleasant feeling struck his chest, and in the same instant a similar feeling tore at his back, drawing a startled gasp from him. He instinctively looked down.

And saw the blade of a scythe piercing clean through the center of his chest.


	4. Chapter 4: Revenge, Served Lukewarm

- Chapter 4: Revenge, Served Lukewarm -

The look on Isaac's face was priceless. Not the one when we realized that he had a length of sharpened steel going into his chest, through his heart, and out his backside(though that one was certainly most precious as well). Rather, the look that came when she stepped out from behind the crate, when he saw her face. The one where he realized that she was responsible. That look was one Karst made an effort to permanently engrave on her memory.

Then she planted her boot on Isaac's chest and used it as leverage to pull her scythe free. With that support lost, the murderous Venus adept collapsed onto the floor like a puppet with his strings cut. Dead.

She felt a hollow sensation inside herself at that, but she stifled it. _Menardi... You are avenged._

A voice from the next room broke in on her thoughts. "Hey Isaac! Where are you? I just saw -"

Garet popped into the room. Isaac's lantern had fallen to the floor along with its owner, but it still shed enough light for him to notice Karst, and it certainly highlighted Isaac's corpse. Garet took a step backwards, hand reaching for a weapon that was of course not there, mouth opening in a cry for aid.

He was halfway through the cry when Agatio appeared behind him and brought a heavy crate crashing down on his head. Garet fell senseless to the floor.

"Done and done!" Agatio declared, dumping the crate aside.

Karst nodded. "Perfect. Didn't I tell you playing dead was a good plan?"

"Yeah? If it was such a good plan, how come we don't have that aqua bitch and the pint size one?"

"We'll get to them. You weren't honestly thinking of tackling all four of them at once?" She squatted down to pick up the lantern from the floor. "Lucky this didn't break. We could have stamped out the fire, of course, but -"

"Hey, that's not a bad idea. Burn them down with their ship."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "It's like you actually work at being stupid." Suddenly noticing a bit of movement, she looked more closely at Isaac. "Well, look at that. He's still alive, barely. He must have used curative psynergy on himself as a knee-jerk reaction, just enough to close off the wound to his heart. Too bad he can't finish the job now that he's unconscious."

"You want to finish them now?"

"No. Since it worked out this way, I'd like to take my time with them..." She looked around. "There's some rope over there. Help me tie them to those ladders."

If nothing else, Agatio was helpful, at least. He got right to work on binding Garet's wrists and ankles to a ladder while she did the same for Isaac. She was finishing with his left wrist when...

"Isaac? Garet?" It was Felix's sister. _The unexpected disappearance of Isaac and Garet's psynergy from the power driving the ship must have alerted her. Just as we anticipated,_ Karst noted with satisfaction. "Are you guys down here? Answer me!"

Her voice was growing more frantic, but Karst couldn't answer her just yet. She wasn't close enough to see what was going on, and there was no telling what she might do if she disoriented her.

Karst was already thinking of what she might do to Isaac. She'd have to make it good, enough to do Menardi proud. _It feels like I've been reaching for this hour for so long... For the end of the emptiness I've felt ever since Menardi left. Maybe, once Isaac's dead, I'll finally be able to cry for her. I know tears are a weakness, but I've felt them burning inside me ever since that wretched maggot hanging to Felix's coattails told me that my sister was dead._

"This isn't funny, you guys! Answer - Oh no."

She could imagine Jenna's dismay at seeing her and Agatio, especially with half the ship's crew taken out. "Hello, Jenna," she said, hefting her scythe. "We've been waiting for you to join us."

The girl was speechless.

"I know what you must be thinking," Karst went on, keeping her voice calm so as not to frighten Jenna into doing anything rash. "You're thinking of running to get Piers to help you fight us. But think for a moment, and you'll see that idea doesn't even qualify as a last desperate chance. Aside from the fact that you could barely defeat us even with Felix leading you, if the two of you use your psynergy to fight us, then what will keep this ship airborne, hmm? And if the ship falls in shallow waters like these, the hull will shatter into splinters, leaving us all with no choice but to swim through some of the most freezing waters in all of Weyard. As members of the Fire Clan, Agatio and me _might_ survive. You and your friends, on the other hand..."

"I get it, damn you!" Jenna snapped.

"Karst, why are you wasting time with talking?" Agatio interrupted. "Let's just kill her, then Piers. Our psynergy should be enough to fly the ship without these four rats."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Karst sighed with exasperation. "We're not going to shed even one drop of blood from any of Felix's group. They saved Prox where we failed to. Honestly, where's your gratitude?"

"They betrayed us!"

"No, Felix betrayed us. Jenna and the others never made any promises to Menardi. Besides, trust isn't an issue anymore. Felix has already more than proved that we were wrong to stop trusting him."

"So you forgive him for saving Isaac?"

"I... haven't decided yet." Whenever she thought about Felix, she felt all confused. She still remembered how tenderly he had held her at Mars Lighthouse, even after she'd tried to kill him and his friends. And she could never, ever forget that he was the one who had saved all of Prox. The very fact that he'd _tried_ to save Prox was enough for her to forgive him for saving Isaac. But what about Menardi? He'd been with her, and she had died. At best, he was guilty of being too weak to save her. At worst, he had helped murder her.

"We'll worry about Felix later," she said. "After we've finished Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia."

"You really think I'll let you do that?" Jenna challenged.

"You don't have a choice," Karst reminded her, picking up another length of rope. "I'm going to tie you up now. Remember, if you try using your psynergy, you'll kill yourself and Piers. You can still try a futile physical struggle with me, but the more cooperative you are, the more inclined I'll be to forgive your brother."

"He saved your life, you... you..."

Karst shook her head. "I never said I believed in being fair."

Jenna looked resigned to the situation, so Karst stepped forward to tie her up. That was when the floor lurched, and the harsh groans of wood tearing and splintering against an irresistible force sounded throughout the ship. She and Agatio were thrown off their feet. "What the blazes!" she cursed.

"The ship is crashing!" Agatio cried out.

Jenna, however, was nimble enough and lucky enough to stay on her feet, and she took immediate advantage of the situation, darting past the two Proxians to reach for Garet's bonds.

"Dammit, Jenna," Karst muttered, grasping her scythe and forcing herself to her feet. "You're leaving me no choice."

Jenna was still focused on untying the rope around Garet's wrist. She never saw the blade of Karst's weapon coming. It tore through her flesh, and she fell to the floor, clutching at the blood flowing from her side.


	5. Chap 5: The Proxian is a Harsh Mistress

Author's Notes: Have I mentioned that you don't need to be registered with FF dot net to review my stories? Try it out. I can use more comments and criticism.

I'll be posting a topic about the direction of this fic in the Land of Fire and Ice forum shortly. Head over and voice your opinion if you're of the mind. In the meantime, hope you enjoy this chapter.

- Chapter 5: The Proxian is a Harsh Mistress -

_They're going to be pretty pissed off about this_, Felix reflected as he climbed the massive spire of earth that he'd forced up from the mountains, spearing the Lemurian ship. It was the most tremendous demonstration of psynergy he'd ever managed to pull off. The act had left him drained, induced a positively agonizing headache, and worst of all, punched a considerable hole in the irreplaceable flying ship. But it was the only way he had of warning Isaac.

Not that that would excuse him; it would take weeks to repair the damage to the ship, and after all, it was his fault that they were in this situation in the first place.

The rough-hewn spire of rock rasped at his legs as he climbed on, scraping ugly tears in his pant legs. Besides the skull-cracking headache, he was still exhausted physically from running after the ship. _I let myself be blinded by my feelings for Karst... didn't think things through before I acted. But I won't let Isaac and Garet die because of that. I won't._

As he neared the ship, he tried calling out again. "Isaac! Garet! Is-"

"Felix? Is that you?" Piers's voice. And a moment later, his face appeared over the edge of the ship. "It's fortunate you're here. Isaac and Garet's psynergy just withdrew from the power flying the ship. I sent Jenna below decks to check on them, but she hasn't come back yet."

A chill went over Felix's body. _Jenna...?_ "How long has she been down there?"

"Not long at all, but I wasn't comfortable with her venturing down there alone to begin with. I would have insisted on accompanying her if I weren't needed to steer the ship. Now that that's no longer an issue..."

Felix gave a grunt of agreement as he heaved himself on board. "We'll check this out together. I think I know what the problem is... I just hope we're not too late."

"Felix, are you well? You look disastrous."

"I'll be fine. Let's go."

They raced across the deck and down to the storage rooms, but as Felix feared, they were too late - though not too late for Jenna, to his relief. His sister was pressed back against a wall, holding a hand to a bleeding gash that ran down her side.

Karst was focused on Isaac, lightly slapping his face. "Come on, you piece of filth, wake up. I won't have you sleeping through your final hour... not with what I have planned for you." At that moment, Jenna noticed Felix and Piers and let out a gasp. Karst twitched at the sound. "Jenna, there's no need for you to see this. Go join Piers up on deck and pretend none of this is happening."

"She won't need to pretend," Felix announced, drawing his sword. "Because I'm not letting it happen."

Karst whirled around. "Well, well, the traitor is here again. I take it that bit about you staying in Prox was just a ruse?"

"Not a word of it. And don't you dare give me that self-righteous 'traitor' bullshit, not after what the two of you just pulled. You let everyone think you both were dead!"

"Ha! You expect us to believe that anyone _cares_ whether we're alive or dead?" Agatio sneered. "Why do you think they chose us to find out what happened to Saturos and Menardi?"

"They chose you because you're the bravest and strongest of those that were left. You -"

Karst cut him off with a laugh. "By Mars, you're naive, Felix. Now, enough of this chatter. If you two leave now, we'll gladly forgive you for having interfered with my vengeance last time. You can take Jenna with you."

"We defeated you before," Piers tried.

"When there were four of you. But I don't see that blonde brat anywhere, and Jenna is in no position to help you. You two are both too weak to defeat a Proxian in a fair fight." She smiled, shifting her weight from one smoothly toned leg to the other. It was amazing, Felix realized – or maybe ridiculous would be a better word. Even now, when she was standing by the bloodied form of one of his friends and threatening another, the first thing in his mind was what a sexy vixen she was. He had to fight the urge to lose himself in those mocking eyes.

"How about this?" Felix said, pointing his sword at her in a gesture of challenge. "If you're so convinced I'm weak, why not prove it in a duel, one-on-one... a fair fight, as you say? Unless you're afraid that I'll smear your blood all over these walls."

She looked at him, considering. "The stakes?"

"If I win, you let go of your vengeance and leave my friends alone."

"That sounds fair. And I think it's obvious what we get if we win." Felix smiled, acknowledging to himself that he was going to enjoy this. Trying to court Karst in the traditional way would have been hopelessly awkward for him. Now, battle... that was something he was more than comfortable with. He'd just have to avoid seriously hurting her this time, and that was no problem for him.

Karst turned to her partner. "How about it, Agatio? Would you like the honor?"

"With pleasure." He cracked his knuckles with a subtle but eager smile.

Felix's own eagerness deflated. "Wait a second... I didn't say anything about fighting _him_."

"What's the matter, kid - scared?"

"Don't flatter yourself." In truth, Felix _was_ scared. He wouldn't say that Agatio was a better fighter than Karst, but he was definitely more powerful. Win or lose, the odds were good that he'd come out of this with shattered ribs or a broken leg. And then there was the little detail that Karst had turned him down for the fight - spurned him. That frustrated him, whatever her reason for it.

Piers's hand grabbing his sword arm almost made him jump. "Felix, this is insane. I understand that you want to prove yourself, but Isaac and Garet's lives are at stake. You can't take him on all by yourself."

"I'll be happy to join in and make it two-on-two," Karst said in a tone that suggested Piers wouldn't like that.

"You cannot win by intimidation," Piers said sharply. "Even against two of you, Felix and I do better as a team."

"Piers..." Felix said, thinking quickly. "No."

"Felix, they're members of the Fire Clan," he whispered back. "And I'm a Mercury adept."

"I don't want either of them or either of us killed," he returned. "There's not much chance of preventing that in a group brouhaha. Besides, if we lose, who's going to get Jenna safely out of here?"

"_They_ will. They offered to let Jenna go, so they have no grudge with her."

"I'm not relying on them. They've already hurt Jenna, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Then why me instead of you? Let me be the one to fight Agatio."

Felix was silent a moment. "It's my responsibility."

After a moment, Piers gave a reluctant nod of understanding and stepped back. Agatio folded his arms and said, "You ready or what?"

"Why don't we take this upstairs, to the main deck?" Felix suggested. "It's less cramped up there."

"No," Karst said firmly. "I have to stay here with my sister's murderers, and I don't want you pulling any dirty tricks while I'm not watching."

"Then we'd better make this a no-psynergy fight. I don't want the rest of you hurt, or the ship damaged, by the two of us tossing fire and earth around."

"That sound good to you, Agatio?"

"Fine! Let's get this started, already!" Agatio said, and charged Felix like a bull.

Felix was quite grateful for that. His psynergy reserves were drained from creating the massive spire of earth, and he doubted he'd be able to concentrate on any useful techniques with the headache that was ripping through his skull anyway. Beating Agatio by himself was tough enough under normal circumstances; if he had to face flame psynergy with none of his own to counter it, it would be utterly hopeless.

He sidestepped Agatio's charge, but it was merely a feint, as he expected; his leg stretched out to trip Felix up. Rather than fight it, he let himself fall backwards, thrust his hands underneath himself to break the impact, and extended both legs simultaneously to kick Agatio in the solar plexus, knocking him backwards.

The Mars adept crashed against a pile of crates. "Nice move," he grunted, hopping to his feet and hefting up one of the crates. "Guess you've gotten a lot of practice since Jupiter Lighthouse, huh? Good!" He hurled the crate at Felix.

Felix snatched his sword up off the floor and slapped the crate aside with the flat of his blade, trying to make the act look like less of an effort than it was. "Still underestimating me, Agatio," he said. "You probably haven't even accounted for the fact that as a Venus adept, my strength is diminished by Jupiter Lighthouse."

"Haven't even blah blah blah," Agatio mocked, throwing a punch at his face. Felix deflected it with his sword, but Agatio was wearing thick leather gloves; the blade drew no blood. "Using big words doesn't impress me."

He knew what Agatio was doing: trying to get him to lose his temper by pretending to not take the fight seriously. To fight the urge to strike out in anger, he took a step back.

He immediately realized this was a mistake, but it was too late. Agatio charged, fist ignited with energy, and caught Felix square in the chest. He flew just a couple feet before his back impacted with a wall. He felt his spine smash against the unyielding timber, his chest cave against the force of Agatio's knuckle. He released a gasp, but he did not yield to the pain, maintaining a firm grip on the hilt of his sword. He slashed at Agatio's face. Agatio instinctively pulled back, but the stroke still scored a shallow cut across his torso.

_For all the good that does. Dammit, if only I weren't so exhausted just from getting here, I wouldn't have made such a boneheaded mistake. I'm making it easy on him!_

"Well, come on," Agatio smirked, spreading his arms in a gesture of invitation. "You're gonna let me off with just the one little cut?"

It was tempting to let loose in a rage, but Felix reminded himself that he'd refrained from pressing his attack for good reason. Instead, he began circling his opponent.

"Ring around the rosie? Fine by me." Agatio put up his fists and imitated Felix's movement. "Ha! Get a look at your sister's face - she knows you ain't got a chance."

Another attempt at distraction. Ordinarily, he'd have matched Agatio misdirection for misdirection, taunt for taunt. At the moment, it was all he could do to focus on what his opponent was doing and keep an eye out for a slip in his defenses. Besides his headache, that punch to the chest was making it hard to breathe. And Jenna...

_No, dammit, don't look at her!_

In the instant that Felix took his eyes off Agatio, the Proxian lunged forward for another swing at his head. Felix tilted his head out of the way and slashed across Agatio's back. With Agatio off-balance, he stamped on the big lunk's heel and thrust across his belly with his sword.

Agatio howled in pain and reached out to grab him, but Felix ducked down, deflected his arm with the flat of his blade, then darted back.

"Nice moves," Agatio snarled, and Felix couldn't hold back a satisfied smile. "Then again, maybe the main thing you got going for you... is your weapon." He picked up a long shard of wood from the crate that had broken earlier, and brandished it at Felix. "We're even now. Ready to get torn apart?"

In fact, having a weapon was not a great advantage for Felix, not because of Agatio's thick skin and scales, but because he didn't want to kill him. Not being able to use anything that might be a killing stroke rather put a cramp in his swordplay.

_To make things worse... I don't think Agatio is worried about hurting me. It's not like him to agree to a fight where he can't murder his opponent._

They circled each other, making tentative attacks at first, but it wasn't long before Agatio went for a serious thrust. Felix stopped it with his sword, and the wood shard shattered. Agatio cursed. "Karst, toss me your scythe!"

"Over my dead body," she returned. "Use your own weapons."

Talking to Karst was a distraction, and Felix took advantage, swinging at Agatio's leg in hopes of disabling him. Before the stroke could reach its mark, the Proxian's fist slammed into his gut. He doubled over, and another punch like a cannonball smashed into his face. He barely had time to spit out a tooth before Agatio lifted him off his feet and threw him. He bounced off a wall, nearly blacking out from the impact, and hit the floor. The pain was blinding, so overwhelming his nerves that he couldn't get the message through for his limbs to move, even as he saw Agatio approach.

The pain did give a moment of lucidity. _Suckered. Completely suckered. Even Agatio's not dumb enough to think Karst would let him use her scythe. With his strength, he'd break it the first time one of his swings connected with something. He just wanted me to think he was distracted... If I didn't have this splitting headache, I'd have realized that right off. Damn it, it's not fair. If-_

Agatio seized him by the neck and hoisted him into the air. "That's all the fight you got in ya? Shame. I thought with no psynergy, this might actually be a pretty even match."

With the threat of death hovering right before Felix, his mind searched for a reason to live, a reason strong enough for him to overcome the exhaustion in his limbs and the throbbing pain from the beating he'd taken. He thought of Isaac and Garet. If he didn't pull himself together... Karst would kill them. A burst of energy surged through Felix. He grabbed hold of Agatio's arm and swung a kick to his stomach.

"Weak," Agatio grunted, and slammed him against a wall a few times to knock the remaining fight out of him.

Felix's mind raced. Jenna. He had to fight back, for her sake, and Piers...

But that didn't hold water. It was obvious from what Karst said when he came in that she and Agatio had no intention of killing either of them. They'd get along fine without him. Even Sheba... He hated the thought of leaving her alone, not even getting to say goodbye, but he couldn't make himself believe that she wouldn't be able to survive without him. She was a strong girl, and besides, Jenna was sure to look after her.

_Damn it, I don't even matter. If anything, they'll all be better off with me gone._

Holding him up against the wall, Agatio readied his fist. "Time to say goodnight, sweet prince." Felix's head rolled back, and his eye fell on Karst.

Her face showed cold disdain, and only a mild hint of disappointment. She was disgusted by the fight he had put up, but had plainly expected little better.

Sudden rage swelled through him. He was _not_ weak, not even remotely so. And he would not let Karst crow over Isaac and Garet's corpses with the thought that their once-friend had been too weak to save them. He would show her how wrong she was.

A fresh dose of adrenaline trickled into his veins. His face contorted with raw determination, and an important piece of his training in Prox came back to him. He gripped Agatio's arm with both hands and growled under his breath, "No mercy."

With one mighty push in opposing directions, muscles stretched to their fullest extent, he dislocated Agatio's elbow. Crying out more in shock then pain, Agatio dropped him. Felix landed on his feet and delivered a hard right to Agatio's face. He followed up with a left, but Agatio blocked it with his right arm. Not slowing, Felix seized his head and pulled him into a harsh knee to the stomach, immediately followed by a kick to the jaw.

To most, it would have seemed incredible that Agatio remained on his feet after that, but Felix was too lost in his bloodlust to think of how much punishment it should take to knock his opponent down. Agatio tried striking back, but Felix caught his fist and delivered a headbutt to the face. He could hear the crunch of cartilage, and the sight of blood streaming from his foe's smashed nose gave him a light beat of pleasure, but he was nowhere near satisfied.

"No... mercy!" Felix coughed out through his own blood, slamming his fist into Agatio's face over and over. When he noticed him beginning to stagger, he kicked one of his legs, sending him crashing to the floor.

He hopped on top of his opponent, squatting on his chest, and began striking him over and over with his fists. Each blow came with an utterly satisfying impact and a slight spatter of blood. The release of his pent-up emotions, the triumphant display of his strength and power over his opponent, made his heart feel more happy and free than it had in ages. This was wonderful.

He wasn't sure how long it would have taken him to stop if he hadn't begun to notice a familiar voice calling his name over and over. He couldn't place the voice, but it somehow brought him back to himself, at least enough for him to realize three things in a hazy sort of way. The first was that Agatio hadn't been moving for a while. The second was that, if Agatio were playing possum, he would have given up on that several punches ago. Both those things would have been irrelevant if not for the third: That he was a good person, or at least tried to be, and repeatedly pummeling an already defeated foe wasn't a very good thing to do. Especially not when said foe was essentially a good man. He stopped, and got up.

The first thing his eyes happened to fall on when his bloodlust had faded was Karst.

Bombarded by physical and mental exhaustion, groaning pain from his injuries, blood loss, the adrenalin still pumping through his veins, and the exhilarating feeling of victory in battle, Felix was in a state of delirium. A vague sense of self had made him pull away from Agatio, but nothing like a sensible thought had entered Felix's head since that rush of anger had given him his second wind. Seeing Karst standing there, raw and beautiful, gazing at him with surprise and interest, he could hear nothing but his triumph over Agatio singing his praises and encouraging him, _You have won the courtship battle; now claim your mate._

He swaggered towards Karst, somewhat unsteady on his feet but growing more purposeful with each stride. Her look of interest turned into a puzzled frown, but Felix thought nothing of that. He stepped forward, took her by the waist with one hand, by the back of her head with the other, and kissed her with a furious passion.

Her lips were warm, smooth, but with a tough leathery texture. Her taste, mixed with the coppery flavor of blood flowing from where Agatio had knocked out his tooth, seemed rich and compelling. For five seconds, it was nothing but deep pleasure, albeit clouded by the foggy mist of delirium. Then he felt a hand seize his hair and jerk his lips away from hers. And the sharp edge of a scythe pressing lightly at the back of his neck.

Karst smirked up at him, her mouth smeared with his blood. "Never lose your head to a woman, Felix... Or you might just lose it in a more literal sense."

For a moment Felix was utterly confused, but soon the shock of this rude awakening brought him to his senses. He smiled, half at himself, half at Karst. "I won the fight. Now... let them go."

"Why should I?"

"You said yourself... you would never break your word so casually."

"You haven't won the fight yet," she returned. "He's still breathing."

"Cut the bullshit! I'm not going to kill Agatio, and you knew that from the start."

"So, you're still too weak to finish off a foe who tried to kill you and your friends," she remarked in a mocking tone.

"Weakness has nothing to do with it. I don't want Agatio dead... and I know you don't either."

"Let go of him, Karst!" Jenna cried. "Can't you see he's hurt!"

Karst opened her mouth to reply, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment they were interrupted by the sound of feet clopping down the ladder to the storage room. "We've got trouble, Felix!" Piers shouted. "I thought I felt a tremor during your fight, and when I went up to look... Some enormous creature is climbing up that length of rock you made! I suspect it's looking for prey."

"'Enormous creature'?" Felix echoed. "Couldn't you be more specific?"

"Forgive me, Felix, but I've never seen one of these things before. Whatever it is, I think we'd better -"

A pinkish snakelike thing of incredible size and a barbed head lashed into the room, sweeping along the walls and ceiling. They all dove to the ground, and more by luck than by the quickness of their reflexes, managed to avoid being hit. The ship groaned at the sudden force.

Then, as swiftly as the snakelike thing had come in, it was gone.

"What in blazes was that thing!" Jenna burst out, looking with revulsion at the viscous transparent fluid it had deposited randomly about the room.

"I suspect that it was the tongue of that cre-"

Piers was interrupted a second time by the pink snakelike thing, which this time made a sweep of the floor. Felix instinctively dove at Jenna to protect her, and Isaac, Garet, Karst, and Jenna herself were already near the far wall of the room. Not being so lucky, Piers screamed as the tongue snatched both him and Agatio, its sticky saliva gluing the two of them to its surface.

Felix could do nothing but stare in horror for a split second at his friend and vanquished foe caught like flies in honey. Once that split second was past, the tongue was gone, the two of them with it.

Then things got worse.

The ship groaned again, and this time the groan was accompanied by an unpleasant screeching and the foreboding sound of timbers cracking and splintering.

"Shit," Felix said softly.

"What is it?" Jenna said, voice panicked. "What's going on?"

"I think -"

He was going to suggest that the creature's weight, combined with its eager scouring for food, was too much for the damaged Lemurian ship to support. But his answer was drowned out by Jenna screaming at the top of her lungs as the whole ship lurched into free fall. The room spun, the storage crates tumbling about along with the five adepts still aboard. Felix went crashing head first into a wall, and his long ordeal was at last brought to a rest by merciful oblivion.


	6. Chapter 6: Immortal Concerns

- Chapter 6: Immortal Concerns -

Sheba's sneezing had let up, but she still felt cold all over. She pulled her blanket tightly about herself and wished for Felix's warmth. On her first night with Saturos and Menardi, Felix had let her sleep with her head on his chest, and even through his vest she could feel how warm he was. His warmth helped her quickly fall asleep on a night she would have thought she'd get no sleep at all.

Remembering that he'd made her some of that tea before he left for the lighthouse, Sheba decided to brave letting the blanket down for a minute to get some. It wouldn't be the same as Felix's reassuring presence, but it might warm her up.

As she grabbed her cup and began pouring tea in, her thoughts segued from Felix to her real father. He wasn't with her... so in a sense, she didn't have a real father at all. Faran had tried, but it wasn't the same - it _couldn't_ be the same. Everyone, even the gods, only gets one father and one mother.

Even so, with Felix she had found many of the things she'd ordinarily have gotten from her father. Protection, comfort, discipline, and most important of all, guidance. Before she met Felix, she hadn't thought she even needed guidance. She thought that since she was a goddess, all she needed to do was exist. Since Felix had opened her eyes... well, she didn't want to go back to just _existing_ ever again. Felix had helped her grow up.

The fact that she saw him almost as a father was what made it so hard for her to accept him liking that horrible woman. She wanted with all her heart for Felix to find the right woman, and Karst definitely wasn't it. Felix was upright, honest, and kind. Karst was dissolute, deceitful, and cruel. He was a wonderful hero; she was a terrible villain. He deserved better than her. Much better.

Sheba sat back down with her tea, awkwardly arranging the blanket around her with one hand. _If only there was some way I could make Felix see how rotten she is... No. What I really want is to get him to notice someone nice, someone worthy of him. It's just not right for him to be with someone who doesn't have a good heart like his._

But there wasn't much hope in that. They hadn't run into any good candidates on their journeys. Sure, even Mia would be better than Karst, but Felix certainly wasn't going to see it that way. And if Felix was staying in Prox, that didn't add any good options. Sheba had nothing against Proxians, but physically they were rather ugly.

_Hmm. Then again, if Felix has fallen for Karst, maybe Proxian is his type. Sure! After all, he spent his teenage years here, didn't he? Makes sense that he'd start to see dark and scaly girls as cuties. And it sure won't be any problem getting one of them interested in him. Maybe Felix is just another guy in Vale, but in Prox he's a hero. Half the women here admire him, and the other half think he's a total hunk._

Sheba had a statistical sampling to support that analysis, in fact, having mind-read everyone they passed by after successfully lighting Mars Lighthouse.

She sipped her tea. Of course, her plans all depended on what was happening in Mars Lighthouse right at that moment. And she honestly didn't know which outcome to hope for. If Karst was dead after all, that would solve everything, except that Felix would be consumed with grief. If she was alive and she spurned him, he would be consumed by heartache. And if she returned his feelings... well, then she might just have to get used to Felix being with her. She was convinced by what Felix had said about how he planned to confess his love to Karst that his feelings for her were genuine. Even if she couldn't respect Karst herself, she could respect what Felix felt for her.

She even admired him a bit more for that. For all the harm Karst had done him, he loved the woman and was willing to defend her even if everyone he cared about raised their voices against her.

A frown crossed her face. _I wonder what he's doing. I thought he'd have been back by now... Either he can't find Karst, or the two of them are having a real long heart-to-heart. Maybe they're even making out._ At that thought, Sheba scrunched up her face in disgust.

There was a knock at the door. Sheba hesitated to answer; pretty much everyone in Prox was still a stranger to her. "...Come on in."

Puelle stepped inside, and she felt a bit of relief. She knew Puelle better than most of the people in Prox, and liked him.

"Hello, Sheba," the big Proxian greeted her, stepping forward until he stood roughly five feet away from her. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Almost as good as new!" she said brightly.

"...But you're still shivering." His voice sounded concerned, and what she was mind-reading from him said the same.

"Yeah, well..." _Geez, can't he see I'm trying to not whine about it? But I guess I should be thankful that he cares... I know that's what Felix would tell me._ "What did you come here for? I didn't expect anyone to come check in on me."

"Well, concern for your health was part of it, but..." He shook his head. "I'm afraid I may have some bad news for you, Sheba. In fact, I'll need to break this to you gently, so let me start with a question I have for you."

"Okay..." She resisted the urge to mind-read him again. Not because she believed that she wouldn't be able to take the bad news straight out, but because it would be too difficult to pretend that she didn't already know what he was going to say.

"I see that Felix isn't here. Do you know where he is?"

"Yeah. He left to, um, pay his respects to Karst and Agatio this morning. He hasn't come back yet."

"Hmm." Puelle pondered a moment. The temptation to mind-read him was almost unbearable. "Do you think he may have decided to bid a last farewell to his friends while he was out?"

Sheba shook her head. "I really don't think so. Felix isn't sentimental like that."

"I see." He clasped his hands together. "Well, that doesn't help solve our mystery, so perhaps I should just tell you what we know. A few hours ago, one of the villagers was out chopping wood in the woods to the south. As he started heading back, he saw Felix running past him, in the direction of where your friends' ship was docked. He called out to him, but Felix didn't even glance in his direction. He became a bit worried... Felix looked very agitated, he said. So, he followed after him. Felix was running too fast for him to keep up, so when it was clear that he was headed for the Lemurian ship, he slowed to a walk. After a while, he reached the ship, and..."

"And what?"

Puelle sighed heavily. "It might be best if I just show you."

"Tell me!" she cried. "Did something happen to Felix!"

"We don't know. All the villager saw there was... the ship's wreckage." Sheba felt her heart stop. "He called the names of Felix and the others, but there was no answer, so he hurried back to Prox to call for a search party. The elder is leading them to the site now."

"The elder? Why not you?"

"I thought that I should be the one to tell you the news. You don't know many people in Prox yet, and..."

Sheba mind-read him as he was speaking and saw, _I should have gone with the search party, but Mars help me, I'm afraid. Afraid to find the corpse of the hero of our village. Afraid that I will fail to uncover what happened there. It is not fair that something so important cannot be solved by strength._

"He's not dead," Sheba said firmly. "Felix is immortal."

"Immortal?"

"That reminds me," she said, stroking her chin. "Is Karst a god, like her sister?"

"...We're all mortals here in Prox, miss." _I don't have the energy to make sense of this child's musings_, she mind-read from him.

She took that in. Obviously if he didn't realize Saturos and Menardi were gods, his knowledge of Karst couldn't be relied on. She wondered if the Proxian gods were as clueless to their status as Felix and the others were. Or maybe they just liked to keep a low profile in their hometown. ...The important thing, of course, was if Karst would be able to fully share Felix's immortal life. She couldn't bring that question up to Felix himself, having promised not to talk to him about godhood anymore.

But that wasn't important right now. What mattered was figuring out what had happened to Felix. If all was well, he ought to have been back by this point, which meant the Proxian's story was believable. The only question was, what would make him run back to the Lemurian ship?

"Okay." She stood up, still holding the blanket around her. "I'm going there."

Puelle hesitated. "Are you sure you're well enough?"

"I have to see," she insisted.

* * *

Sheba was willing to go alone, but Puelle insisted on a pair of bodyguards. It was far too dangerous for travel by oneself, especially in her condition. She supposed he was right in principle, though as a goddess she had survived far worse than anything the Proxian wastes could throw at her. Her only real worry was that her bodyguards would be hurt; sick as she was, she couldn't be sure she could protect them.

They did look capable of taking care of themselves, at least. They were one man and one woman, something Sheba was beginning to suspect was a tradition among Proxians. The man was short but burly and focused, with skin that was a light sapphire in color. The woman moved with a sort of deadly grace, each step soft and sure. Her hair was cut startlingly short, barely passing her earlobes. They weren't nearly as imposing as Saturos and Menardi, but Sheba wouldn't feel sure of her being able to defeat either one of them in a one-on-one fight.

The two of them said little, and Sheba opted not to mind-read them. She'd rather not know what they thought of her; though the majority of Proxians rated all of Felix's group as heroes, some had eyes only for Felix himself and regarded his companions as outsiders who had simply tagged along. It was possible that some of them might even despise her, and nothing was worse than mind-reading someone's hate for you.

In due course, the ship's wreckage came within sight. Sheba felt a hard lump growing in her throat. This was no normal shipwreck. Rather than just a hole punched in the side and some wing damage, it looked as though the ship had been ripped apart. Tears and holes scarred the entire vessel. The body of the ship was technically still in one piece, but barely.

"Gods..." the woman accompanying her breathed. "What happened here?"

"We've lost the savior of Prox," the man said, his voice choked.

"He's alive," Sheba said. "None of you have any clue what this shipwreck means. Felix is alive." But she had to stop to wipe away the tears flowing from her eyes. Felix's words kept ringing in her head.

_ "Sheba... no, I'm not."_

_ She laughed nervously. "Stop trying to trick me, Felix! It's not funny at all. If you weren't immortal, jumping off Venus Lighthouse would have been... suicide! And all just to keep an eye on me! You can't -"_

_ "You would have drowned if I hadn't, Sheba."_

How could someone do something like that - throw himself away to almost certain death, just for a faint chance at saving one other person? Ever since Felix had told her he was mortal, she'd wanted him to explain that. Sheba understood valor and heroism, but any way she looked at it, if Felix was mortal, what he'd done didn't make sense. She wondered if this was one of the most important lessons he had to teach her. Now she would never learn it.

_...No! Felix was wrong! He is immortal... it's the only way he could have survived the fall from the lighthouse. _But a terrible thought struck her. _Unless... Unless I used my power to protect him, without realizing it..._

She shook her head fiercely. _I can't give up! Even if Felix IS mortal, I can't just give up on him. Giving up is the last thing he'd want me to do when someone's life is at stake. I can't let him down, not after all he's done for me._

"If he's alive," the Proxian man said, "...why hasn't he come back to Prox? Why would he abandon you?"

"I don't know," Sheba admitted. "But if he's in trouble, I'm going to... to... ah-CHOO!" She wiped her nose. "I'm going to find him."


	7. Chap 7:SelfControl and the Lack Thereof

- Chapter 7: Self-Control and the Lack Thereof -

When he was a boy, Felix was taught about the afterlife. People who did good things while they were alive were brought to a place of unsurpassed happiness and relaxation. People who did evil things while they were alive went to a place of bitter torment and suffering. Later in life, he began to wonder if there was a place for people who tried their best but tended to ruin the lives of everyone they got close to. And if there wasn't, then which of the two afterlifes did people like him go to?

Such thoughts didn't cross his mind often; Felix wasn't the sort to give much thought to the hereafter. But seeing as he was now dead(even if he were willing to lay odds on his surviving the ship crash and escaping the enormous beast that was after them, he knew he would have drowned in the freezing Proxian waters), his most immediate concern was whether he was in heaven or hell.

The case for the hell side was pretty good. Every inch of his body throbbed with pain and weariness. His teeth felt like someone had been trying to pull them out for the past several hours, and he could taste blood pooled all around his gums. Every breath tore at his chest from the inside, as though he had broken ribs. He could feel a foreign object lodged in his right leg, and his knuckles felt as though they'd been shredded up, probably from punching Agatio so hard. On top of all that, it was damn cold.

There was only one piece of evidence supporting his being in heaven, but it was a doozy. Karst lay on her side beside him, watching him with a lazy expression on her face. Her clothes and hair were lightly soaked, and her resulting appearance more than toed the line of decency. He found his eyes trailing first over her bosom, then her legs.

"Good to see that you're finally awake," she remarked. "But you might want to wipe off that drool."

He promptly looked away and wiped at his mouth. A crimson stain was left on his glove. He stared at it. "That's not drool; it's blood."

"It's an expression," she sighed. "Or are you still delirious?"

"Could be." He kept staring at his blood. "So you died too? Or are you just...?"

"A demon," she smirked. "Here to torment you." She seized his bloodstained hand and jerked him up to a sitting position. He screamed as the object in his leg shifted. Now that he was sitting up, he could see that it was a shard of timber... from the ship.

_I'm alive._

"Shit!" He yanked his hand out of her grip. "Why the hell didn't you pull that out?"

"Do I look like a healer to you?" she snapped back. "I didn't want to hurt your leg worse than it already is."

"It's not fucking alchemy! Just pull it straight out!"

"_You_ do it!"

"What, did you pull out your own splinters in your family!"

He took a breath, struggling to calm himself. Yelling wasn't the way to get something, not even from Karst, and she obviously just wanted to help. Forcing himself to look past his frustration, he said, "I can use psynergy to heal myself, but not until you pull that thing out. I swear I won't blame you if you hurt me. ...Please."

She looked at him - not in his eyes, but at his leg. For once, she looked... afraid.

Then with a deep breath, she took hold of the shard of wood - Felix clenched his eyes shut in anticipation - and yanked it out. Felix cursed again, and yanked the leg close to his chest. Calming himself once more, he concentrated on his injury, letting the power of psynergy flow into it.

"You might want to heal your face, too," Karst suggested. "Agatio's fist did a number on it. Wouldn't want you to go from ruggedly handsome to just rugged."

She was probably right, but the first thing on his mind was, "Where's Jenna?"

Karst shook her head. "I think I saw her swimming for the surface, but I couldn't keep an eye on her and drag your carcass out of there at the same time. She may have been able to use her psynergy to keep herself from freezing, but there's a good chance she's joined the Great Clan of Fallen Warriors."

"If she was strong enough not to black out when she hit the water, she's strong enough to have made it out alive."

"...Sure. I'll go with that."

Looking around, Felix saw that they were sitting on a stretch of hardened snow and ice. Not that far from them was a pool of water as wide as a house. Leaning over it, he could see from his reflection that his face was indeed a mess. The blood smeared all over was mostly from wounds elsewhere, but the lumps on his forehead and cheeks were definitely swelling.

While he concentrated his psynergy on fixing the problem, he remarked, "You don't sound the same when you're not involved in a fight. You talk almost like a whole 'nother person."

"So do you."

He flashed her a look. "How?"

"You've stopped boasting. You sound like you actually care about other people, not just proving yourself." She cocked her head. "Maybe the only reason you boast is because you figure the tougher your rep, the less likely people will try to hurt the people you care about."

"Nice theory. I wouldn't bet on it, though." The healing done, he splashed some freezing water on his face to wash the blood off. "Where are we, anyway?"

"A cavern," she shrugged. "I just kept swimming up, thinking I'd hit the surface. Which I guess I did, only it was _that_ surface," she said, pointing to the pool Felix was washing himself in.

He frowned. "So... an above-ground cavern with an underwater entrance? What kind of animal hunts in the water but makes its home on dry snow?"

"Does it have to be an animal that made it? Couldn't it just be here naturally?"

"How? How could nature drill a hole in the underside of a chuck of ice, instead of just wearing it down evenly?"

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Use your head, Felix. Alchemy has probably been doing some strange things since you lit the lighthouses. We can't assume Mother Nature is her usual self anymore."

Felix got to his feet, rubbing his face to soften the biting chill left by the water. "I guess it doesn't matter, does it... Unless we find a way out of here, we'll starve if nothing else."

"You think I haven't been looking for a way? You just washed yourself in this cave's only way out. Sure, it's the same way we came in, but we had buoyancy on our side then." She paused, then let out a short laugh. "At least there's a silver lining. Whatever happens to us, two of my sister's killers are dead and gone."

"What are you talking about?" he said, a mix of dread, anger, and shame already churning in his heart at Karst's words. "You didn't see what happened to them... did you?"

"I don't need to have seen. I..." She stopped and laughed again. "That's right, you didn't see exactly what I did to Isaac, did you? My scythe went right through his heart. Agatio brained Garet with one of those crates."

A cold chill went through his heart. "You're lying," he said, stepping towards Karst. "They can't be dead."

"Neither of them would have stood a chance without proper care - certainly not Isaac," she went on, ignoring him completely. "Already on the brink of death, I doubt they even regained consciousness before they drowned. And no one to save them but Jenna, who had her hands full just saving herself. It's really a pity you stopped me from extracting my final justice from Isaac, but dead is dead. I'm sure Menardi would have -"

"You murdering bitch!" He punched her with a full strength right hook, knocking her to the icy, and fell upon her, hands grasping her throat. "They did nothing wrong, damn you! Nothing!" She struggled to get out from under him, to no avail. "I'll kill you! I'll..."

"Go ahead... and do it," Karst gasped out through her strangled windpipe. "Already have... everything I... wanted. Prox saved... Isaac dead. ...I lose... nothing..."

He glared at her, the rage within him demanding her death, but his hands unwilling to do the job. And as she spoke, he felt his breathing slowing, calming. The rage faded, not all at once, but swiftly enough. His fingers left her throat, and he stepped away from her, trembling.

He let out a shuddering breath. "...It's... it's hypocritical of me, isn't it? I mean, I forgave you for trying to kill Isaac... It was wrong, but I can understand why you would do that. I'd have done the same thing if Agatio killed Jenna. So why should I be so mad at you now just because you succeeded?" He laughed, but even to him it sounded hollow. _Isaac, Garet, Piers, and Agatio... they're all gone. Dead. And I..._

"You-" Karst coughed. "You blame yourself, don't you? As though it was your scythe that cut Isaac down, your attack which left the two of them for dead." She shook her head. "Don't kid yourself, Felix. It was all me. You're innocent."

"Innocent?" He looked away from Karst. Right now, he felt too ashamed to face anyone. "I let everyone down. My... my stupid optimism, thinking you'd changed your mind about Isaac, was what let you get at him and Garet. And then, when I confronted you... I lost control." The memory of what he'd done in the fight with Agatio was hitting him now, all of it falling together into a inescapable condemnation, an irrefutable proof of his guilt. "That voice I heard, calling my name over and over while I was beating Agatio... that was Jenna screaming at me to stop, wasn't it? In that fight I let loose a side of myself I swore I'd never let her or Sheba or my parents see. Gods... what must that have been like for her, seeing her own brother act like that? Then I followed that up by turning my feelings for you... into a betrayal to all of them."

After a moment of silence, Karst said, "Why tell _me_ this? I'm not interested in your guilt."

"What you did is forgivable. You did it for love of your sister. What I did... I did out of lack of self-control."

"Self-control." She shook her head. "Just a word for being too weak and afraid to let people see who you really are. I never thought you would fall into that pitiful web of lies, Felix."

"It's not about being afraid. Jenna didn't deserve to have to see me that way."

He risked a glance back at Karst, and noticed blood running down her chin from a split lip. From when he'd punched her, he realized.

He stepped towards her. "What are you staring at?" she demanded.

"Here, let me take care of that..." He touched the cut briefly to indicate what he meant. She showed no negative reaction, so he concentrated his psynergy on healing the cut. "You... saved my life back there, didn't you? Why did you do that?"

She wiped her fingers over her lips, as though she didn't trust that he had actually healed her. "Honestly? I just grabbed the first person I saw who I didn't want to die. But I do have something I want to ask you. Did you help kill my sister?"

"Before you were sure I couldn't have done it. What changed your mind?" He figured he already knew the answer, but he was curious as to what she'd say.

"You've proved yourself by lighting Mars Lighthouse. You couldn't have defeated my sister all by yourself, but you could have helped."

"Didn't think you'd give an honest answer." Before she could attempt a retort, he answered, "I was there when Menardi was killed. I did nothing."

"You're not even going to make an excuse?"

He shrugged. "Saturos and Menardi wouldn't let Sheba go. Isaac and Garet wouldn't let us light the lighthouses. I wasn't sure which side I wanted to win. And even if I had the courage to step in and try to stop the fight, I know your sister would never listen."

"Why does that little blonde brat mean so much to you?"

"She didn't deserve to be dragged into it. That's all."

Karst folded her arms. "For that, you let my sister be killed?"

"I'm just explaining myself, not saying what I did was right. It wasn't a choice that I gave a lot of thought to; there wasn't time." He sighed. "If you're looking for another target for your vengeance, I'm a good pick. But we should focus on getting out of here and helping the others first."

An odd look darkened her face, as though his suggestion caused her some sort of disappointment. "I told you, there's no way out."

"We can at least try swimming."

She snorted. "Maybe you're in a hurry to get yourself drowned, but I'm not." She put a hand to his cheek and looked into his eyes. "You see, there's a second reason I saved your life."

Trapped in her captivating gaze, and bewildered at least as much by her peculiar manner as he was by her enigmatic words, Felix could only ask, "What?"

Karst leaned forward, and for the next few seconds he was only aware of the sensation of her warm lips locked onto his. While this had happened once before mere hours ago, in his delirious state that had seemed like a dream, and more importantly, Karst had not been the aggressor. Without conscious thought, he responded, clutching her to him and kissing back as he'd often fantasized of doing.

At some point he became aware that he was now on his back, with Karst on top of him, her hands pulling open his vest.

"H-hey!" He grabbed her arms and pushed her as far off as he could, though she remained seated on his waist. "What the hell is this?" he demanded.

A smirk played on her face. "Don't play innocent, Felix. I could see in your eyes when you woke up that you wanted this."

He blushed. "I'm more confused that _you_ would want this."

"When we met again, in Madra, I thought I sensed a... raw animal fury burning inside you," she said, stroking his jaw with a finger. "It was just a feeling, and you seemed to prove me wrong at Jupiter Lighthouse. There, you were nothing more than a normal man. But today, when you fought Agatio..." She drew a breath. "...you were _amazing_. That was what I wanted. And since we don't have any reason to fight each other for the moment, this is as good a time as any to have you. Now, enough talk."

She resumed her assault, and with his only doubt answered, he saw no reason not to respond in kind. He helped her pull off his vest and then eagerly caressed her body, fingers occasionally pressing at the edges of her clothing as he worked up the courage to disrobe her.

_Sweet Mars. Somehow I always believed I could make this happen, but I never would have thought it'd be this easy. No having to go through the awkward romance and courting... Just what comes naturally._

As wonderful and astounding as it was, it made sense in retrospect. He'd always suspected that Karst would hate a conventional courtship as much as he would, so it wasn't far-fetched that she would sense that he felt the same way and would accept her advance.

Not that the sense in it mattered to him. He was too busy busy enjoying the sensations and urges that threatened to overwhelm him. Soft skin and hard, smooth scales. Icy ground pleasantly stinging at his back. Crimson hair spilling onto the side of his face. The ferocity of her moves, as though they were fighting once again. The liberation of knowing that he didn't need to be gentle either.

It was all what he'd yearned for, if not more. But a thread of guilt kept pulling at him. He made an effort to ignore it, but the thread thickened into a cord, jerking at his heart. And imposed over Karst's lust-filled eyes appeared the images of Isaac and Garet. And Sheba's proud face, shaking her head in disapproval.

With a deep inward groan, he pushed Karst off of him again. "No." She looked baffled, and he added, "We can't do this."

Karst scowled. "What do you mean, we can't? We're fucking _doing_ it now."

She started pulling off her shirt. Alarmed, he scooted out from under her and grabbed his vest. "Look, just... Think a moment, will you? This is fucking messed up. You just killed my friends, I just beat your friend to a pulp, and we're making love to each other? This is so fucked up, it..."

"So what?" she demanded. "You think it's going to save your friends' lives if we don't enjoy ourselves?"

"Not everything is about results! Four people are probably dead because of our anger and stupidity; the least we can do is have some respect!"

"Respect," she scoffed, tossing her disheveled hair back over her head. "Are you going to bring up self-control again, too? What a good little schoolboy you are, Felix. But in case you haven't noticed..." -she gestured around the barren chamber- "...'teacher' isn't here. It's just the two of us. There's no one here to disapprove or be scandalized or get hurt feelings or otherwise give a shit what you do with me. For once in our lives we have the opportunity to be ourselves and do what we want without anyone else getting hurt. You're really not going to take it?"

He looked at her, considering, even though he already felt that the answer was no, that it had to be no. This was everything he'd dreamed and longed for for himself, but that was exactly why he couldn't take it. He didn't deserve it, and the universe was apparently determined to see that justice was done so far as he was concerned.

_Would have been nice if the universe had seen fit to save Isaac and Garet, but I guess divine retribution is more important than divine mercy._

"Karst," he said, "...apologize for what you did to Isaac and Garet."

She laughed. "Why should I? They killed my sister. Besides... I think you like me better for having killed your friends, the same as I like you better for letting Menardi die. Anger makes things between us... more interesting, doesn't it?"

"I... that's not..." _Shit. Why am I even trying to deny it? The two of us are too alike._ "Look, it doesn't matter what I want! This is about what's right! Isaac and Garet were good people! They were just misled about the lighthouses, and trying to save Jenna. Saturos and Menardi didn't give them a choice. They didn't want to kill anyone; they were just trying to do what they thought was right. They never would have hurt anyone again... and you killed them. And for what? Your sister's still gone. I understand why you did it, but can't you see that all you managed to do was kill innocent people, not to mention hurting the people who cared about them?"

Karst looked back at him, bit her lip for a moment, then snapped, "Alright, fine. I admit it: I'm sorry I killed Isaac and Garet. I thought it would satisfy me, but..." She turned away. "...but it just made me feel a bit emptier. I should have listened to you about why they did what they did. Satisfied?"

"Yeah." He took a breath. "And I'm sorry I let Menardi die. I should have done something. It's just... It's hard to stand up against someone you've known all your life in defense of someone you met just three years ago, especially after they broke their promise about Sheba."

"Fine. Apology accepted." She raised an eyebrow. "You realize that you've completely killed the mood, don't you, Felix?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, really I am, but we shouldn't have done it anyway. We..." He faltered a moment, but forced himself on. Maybe this wasn't the best time to tell her how he felt, but it might be the only chance he got. "...We haven't gotten to know each other that well yet. If we started off by having sex, we'd be defining our relationship by that. You're a very attractive woman, but you mean more to me than that."

Her reaction startled him. Her eyes lowered to the ground, as if she were embarrassed. _But that's ridiculous... Nothing embarrasses Karst. Nothing could._

"What do you mean by that?" she ventured.

"I've always sensed you were different from Menardi," he pressed on. "For her and Saturos, the lighthouses were almost an excuse to bully people. She was interested in saving her home and her family, but that was it. But you... You didn't make it obvious from the start, but I always suspected that you really cared about the people of Prox. You would have done anything to save them, even if everything you had was already lost. Your family, your friend, your life. Even your pride, when you gave up the mission of lighting Mars Lighthouse to me."

"'Friend'? What are you talking about? I've never had any friends."

Not wanting to have his confession derailed, he ignored that. "Prox has become my home, because I feel such a strong connection to the fighting spirit of its people. But I've never met another Proxian who cares as strongly as you do. That's one of the main reasons that kept me fighting as hard as I could to light Mars Lighthouse. It's the reason I went back there looking for you. It's not just because of..." He fumbled for a non-vulgar way of saying what he was thinking. "...of how you make me want to give up my self-control that I had to see you again." He made a fist and lightly pressed the knuckle against Karst's chest. "It's because of what you've got beating right in here."

She stared down at his hand until he removed it, then looked him in the eyes. Her own eyes burned with harsh displeasure. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Now if you'll excuse me, your company is getting very dull."

With that, she turned and walked away.

"Karst?" No reply. "Karst, where are you going?"

"Leave me alone, Felix."

_I have to stop her. It could be dangerous in this cave, and if we get separated..._

He stopped, and laughed quietly at himself. That was such an obvious excuse to pursue her like the classic stubborn lover that it was pathetic. Even without her scythe, Karst could take care of herself. Better to let her have some time alone.

Feeling drained by Karst's rejection, Felix plopped down on the cold ground and rested his hands on his knees. _I let love keep me from using my head again. At Mars Lighthouse, I felt something so strong between us, that we were kindred spirits, feeling the same things... I guess even though I told Sheba, even told myself, that Karst might reject me, deep down I thought she had to feel that bond between us too. I thought once I told her she'd understand right away, that it would be as clear to her as it was to me when I held her at Mars Lighthouse._

_ Only now... even to me, it's not so clear. She wasn't interested at all in the feelings I was telling her about; she just wanted to get laid with me._

He sighed, his heart heavy. _Maybe this was all just a big mistake, a silly thought I got from staring too deep into Karst's eyes. Maybe we're not kindred spirits at all._


	8. Chapter 8: Why Can't I Die?

Author's Notes: As forewarned on my FF dot net profile, this will the last chapter you'll see for the next four weeks. Taking my Christmas break. You'll see chapter 9, in which we catch up with Jenna and get a look into Karst's history, on January 4. After that we'll be back to the usual biweekly schedule. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and don't forget to review; it's hard to get a good idea of what the readers think with an average of 1 review per chapter.

- Chapter 8: Why Can't I Die? -

Isaac woke up to find that his eyes were already open. They felt soupy, filmy, and his vision was blurred to the point where he could make out nothing but waves of color. He quickly closed them. Doing so, he became aware of an ache fading from them.

_What happened? I remember... going down to the storage room for some reason. Then, pain, and Karst's face. Or was that part just a nightmare?_

_ Chest feels so tight. Like I'm being suffocated._

He tried to take a breath - and found that he couldn't.

Panicking, he struggled with his whole body, kicking and struggling through what he now realized was not air but water. His lungs screamed, firing his limbs to reach all the more desperately for the surface, but something was gripping his left ankle, keeping him from getting anywhere. His futile struggles went on for a few moments, then abruptly halted as a thought hit him.

_I'm not breathing... so why haven't I drowned yet?_

Regarding the situation calmly, he realized that the water filling his mouth, throat, and lungs, while extremely uncomfortable, was bringing him no closer to death. Though his lungs continued to hoarsely demand oxygen, his body apparently didn't actually need it.

_How... how is this possible? I could believe it if I had some psynergy to let me breathe underwater, but how can I live without breathing? And - I remember now! Karst got me through the heart! I should have been dead before I even hit the water!_

The thought that he actually _was_ dead crossed his mind briefly, but he rejected it. He didn't feel dead, and heaven couldn't possibly be so uncomfortable and confusing.

To get a better idea of his situation, he tried opening his eyes again. Some of the film had cleared from his eyes, and his vision was marginally less blurry. This time, he could make out Garet's limp form. He was attached to a hunk of the ship, the ropes Agatio had bound him with still holding him to the ladder. Not even a twitch came from him.

_No. If I won't die, then there's no way Garet will either. I won't let him die._

In answer to his will, a bright glow surrounded Garet and carried him upward like a mother picking up her child. The ropes which had held him dissolved against its brilliance. The aura lifted him all the way to the surface, then stopped, but did not disappear. It remained around Garet like a protective shell.

All of this felt perfectly natural to Isaac, though he idly wondered why he'd never done something like this before. With Garet taken care of, he looked to his own situation. His wrists and ankles were still bound with rope, but the ladder he'd been tied to had apparently broken in the crash. One piece, however, had lodged into some coral, and that was what had snared his left ankle.

Having already willed Garet to survive, willing the inconvenient bindings to dissolve into dust came without a moment's thought. Freed, Isaac began to float towards the surface. There was no hurry, so he didn't bother with serious swimming. He just let his body rise until his head broke over the waves.

As soon as he reached air, his lungs began compulsively vomiting up sea water. After two heaves he managed to gather control of himself, and focused psynergy on squeezing his lungs as vigorously as possible, causing him to spew out bucket loads. After just a few more heaves, he found himself taking in the sweet ambrosia of oxygen. The scent and feel of it being drawn into his body overwhelmed him, filled him with a sensation of euphoria. After spewing out one last spritz of sea water, he let loose with a laugh. Superfluous or no, it felt good to be breathing again.

Eventually he chanced to look down, and was mildly dismayed to see blood in the water. At first he thought he might have been coughing up, but he shortly noticed that it was coming out of his chest, where Karst's scythe had pierced him.

_Pierced clean through to the heart._ He regarded the wound with a sort of morbid fascination. _Oh yeah, that's definitely a fatal wound. No question about it._

He laughed again, this time more with mirth than with joy. The hilarity of being killed in multiple ways over the course of an hour or two and still not dying was too much, at least while he was on his oxygen high. Still, bleeding from the chest was a bit disgusting, so he focused on his wound and closed it up neatly in a matter of seconds.

_Boy, I'm beat. So... how about a little raft?_

He half-expected himself to be able to make a little craft of timbers lashed together with rope just by thinking about it, but he decided to go for a more realistic proposition and concentrated on a stretch of water, making it instantly freeze into a little ice raft. He slapped his arms over it and hoisted himself up.

Garet was still encased in the bright glow, so it took less than a minute to spot him again and bring him to the little chuck of ice. The little aura followed his will precisely, carrying Garet with it.

"So, Garet," he said. "Any idea what happened to Jenna and Piers?"

He could see the wreckage of the ship in the distance, but nothing else of real interest. If Karst had gotten both him and Garet, it made sense that she would have gotten Jenna and Piers too. But somehow Isaac doubted it. He didn't know what had made their ship crash, but it couldn't have been part of Karst's plan; obviously a snag had come in somewhere, and that might have given Jenna and Piers a chance to escape. And if Karst had gotten them, why didn't they end up near him and Garet? They had probably headed back to Prox to get help for the two of them.

That left him with only one concern: How did he live through all that? He was good with psynergy, sure, but that didn't make him...

"Oh gods," Isaac breathed aloud, an ironic invocation if there ever was one. The shock of his realization made his heart nearly stop. It was crazy, fantastic, and almost unbelievable, but now he had no choice but to admit that it was true. The words of a girl he'd once dismissed as delusional now rang in his head.

"_Don't you realize who we are? ...Immortality. Great powers. What's that spell?"_

"Sheba... Oh gods, Sheba, you were right all along."


	9. Chapter 9: Pain and Guilt

- Chapter 9: Pain and Guilt -

It would have been a relief to both body and mind to black out, but Jenna refused to give in. She ground her teeth against the searing cold of the sea water, defied the soreness of her body from being battered by the ship's crash, and fought towards the surface.

_Dammit, I survived Felix dragging me halfway around the world and through every floor of all four lighthouses. I am NOT being done in by a stupid shipwreck!_

The wound Karst had scored on her was worse by now, and she knew that if she didn't make it to dry land soon her strength would start draining fast. She already felt scarcely stronger than a kitten, but she forced her limbs to give out the strength that she knew they still had, swimming with vigorous thrusts. In just a few moments, she broke through to the surface.

Unfortunately, this was only half the job. Looking around, she saw she was still a decent swim from the nearest shore. With a heavy sigh, she forced herself to push on, stroking her numb arms through the freezing waters over and over.

It took her longer to reach shore than she expected, but through sheer stubbornness she kept from succumbing to the cold. Dragging her shivering body onto the icy shore, she breathed a prayer of thanks that she was a Mars adept. It would have been a lot better if she had something for fuel, but she could still maintain a flame in midair with some extra effort. Not wanting to waste energy, she held it just long enough to get a little feeling back in her legs.

With her own immediate danger passed, Jenna's thoughts went back to her companions. She felt like crying, but she held it in. _You don't know they're dead... they could all be fine. They could._

Heart heavy, she began walking back towards Prox. There was shelter there, firewood, and Sheba too. Sheba could help her find the others.

* * *

_Damn Felix. Damn him._ Karst kicked a stray chuck of ice out of her way. _What was all that nonsense about how he had to see me again supposed to mean, anyway? And why the blazes do I care?_

She realized Felix had to have been talking about love, but that was an issue too messy and complicated for her to even think about. She believed in focusing on simpler things: anger, compassion, hunger, justice, lust.

That last one she wasn't used to feeling, but she did lust for Felix. Because of that fury with which he tore into Agatio, because of his handsomeness, and because of the allure of the exotic. So far as she knew, no Proxian had ever had intercourse with a southerner before; at any rate, the notion was easily intriguing enough to appeal to her. There weren't exactly dignified reasons for wanting a man, but Karst had as little respect for pride as she did for self-control. She had urges, and to deny them or the reasons behind them was to become delusional and frustrated. If she were the sort of person to hide from her own self, she'd never have been able to admit that she had been wrong to kill Isaac and Garet.

_For all the good that does me,_ she thought, bitterly reflecting on how Felix had refused her. It frustrated her in a way she'd never been frustrated before. She'd actually had to get out of there before she lost control of herself and vented her frustration by trying to rip Felix's face off.

_Damn it. Now _I'm_ the one exercising self-control. And why should I care why Felix would refuse me? He's just like all men: weak._

The male's lack of backbone was not a new revelation to Karst. She'd begun to suspect it in the first years where she was left with only Menardi. Everyone in Prox knew her sister was unstable, sanity unhinged by the deaths of the rest of their family, and they despised her for it. It was not uncommon to lose family to the harsh conditions in Prox, and most of those who suffered such losses managed to shoulder the burden and carry on.

Madness was a weakness, and Karst shared everyone's disgust for Menardi's inability to face the same pain she herself had endured. But that did not excuse the way they ostracized and ridiculed Menardi behind her back, and there was certainly no cause for the same thing being done to her. They shunned her for Menardi's sins, and Karst realized it was because they feared her. The girls did as well as the boys, but with them it was different. Some of the girls at least had the courage to snicker where she could hear. The boys simply avoided her.

Then there was the incident with Saturos. The elder had chosen him to be Menardi's partner, presumably because he was as senselessly antagonistic as her. Karst had never liked him. Menardi at least had an excuse for lashing out; she could never figure out what was wrong with Saturos.

It happened when Menardi was out helping in a search for a boy who'd been lost. Saturos came to their house, looking for Menardi, or so he said. When Karst let him come inside and wait, however, it was less than five minutes before he grabbed her and pinned her to the rug. She fought back as he began tearing her clothes from her, but her strength was no match for his, and she was hit with the sickening realization that a part of her wanted this. Not just the sex, but being forced into it, having a strong male subdue her and take her regardless of whether she wanted it or not.

Though she instinctively tried screaming, she didn't expect anyone to hear; their house was isolated, and most of their closest neighbors had joined the search party with Menardi. So it surprised her when the door opened and Luren stepped in. She never found out exactly what he was doing there - needed someone to mend his shirt, maybe. But she would never forget the predatory look on Saturos's face when he turned towards him and said, "Get out of here, Luren."

"But..." he protested, staring at Karst. Save for her boots, every article of clothing had been torn from her. It was not desire which made him stare, of course; she was still a child, too young to have any of the womanly traits that might excite a man.

"Didn't you hear me, Luren? Just. Walk. Away."

Luren did not move, but Karst could see in his eyes that he was going to back off. He realized what Saturos was doing, but he was too weak to raise a hand to stop it.

Such cowardice did more than appall her; it infuriated her to action. With Saturos's attention momentarily diverted, she slipped one of her arms free, seized a wooden stool that lay just a few feet away, and slammed it against his head. His grip loosened, and she kicked him in the stomach as hard as she could. It was enough to allow her to break free. With that, she bolted out the door, slipping past Luren, and plunged into the bitter cold outside, still wearing nothing but her boots.

Once outside, she found a snowdrift and plunged into it to hide herself. Though the Fire Clan were said to be immune to the cold, after a few hours of that even she could feel something of a chill. She did not emerge from the snowdrift until she was confident that Menardi would have returned from the search. She returned home and told her sister what Saturos had done while she pulled on fresh clothes, her voice uncontrollably cracking through her narrative. Menardi called her a liar and gave her a good beating. It was a predictable response, but for some reason it came as a shock to Karst at the time. As unpleasant as the incident was, though, Luren's cowardice fully opened her eyes to the weakness of every male around her.

Then Felix came to Prox, and somehow she began to think he might be different. He was no warrior, but he was an outcast in Prox, like her, and he accepted and lived with that fact. He neither griped about how he was treated nor turned his face from his oppressors in shame.

But any illusion of Felix being different from other men was shattered when Menardi found out she'd been hanging out with him. Even as Menardi beat her, Karst could see Felix peeping in through a window. He saw, but he didn't stand up for her.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. After that, Felix never tried speaking to her again, not until Madra. Their relationship had gotten tough, so he'd backed off. Because he was weak.

_If only I had learned my lesson then, and given up on him for good. But when I saw him in Madra, with a raging power that I'd never seen before burning within him, I... I didn't think. I thought of my sister, I thought of what I'd do to her murderer, I thought of how I would light the lighthouses, but not a single thought crossed my mind about how I was going to deal with Felix. Every glance I gave him, every word I spoke to him, every action I took or didn't take towards him, came on pure instinct._

_ It's obvious now what my attitude towards him was: I wanted him. I wanted him to pursue me, to prove himself to me, and finally give every ounce of his burning strength and passion to me._

_ Desires of a fool. All he's done is hurt me again, by making me face my guilt over what I did to Isaac and Garet. If it weren't for him, I could have just buried it all inside, told myself that they were evil and deserved everything I did to them._

"I should have just let him drown," she spat out.

But the words stung her even as she said them. Not because of any positive feelings she might still have towards Felix, but because like Isaac, he'd only tried to do the right thing. He had every right to kill her for what she'd done to Isaac and Garet. Sure, she'd saved his life, but at best that was just repayment for him saving hers back at Mars Lighthouse. Besides, his saving her life was no excuse for losing Menardi's life, so why should her saving Felix's life be an excuse for taking Isaac and Garet's lives? But he'd done what he thought was the right thing, and let her off with an apology. More important than that... he'd saved Prox.

So obviously saving Felix had been the right thing to do. He deserved to live, and the world would be a better place with him in it.

Nonetheless, every association she'd had with him had ended in pain for her. And this time, in rejection as well. _Sure, he offered me love instead - that's what it sounded like, anyway - but how can something as complicated as love be worth it? Maybe it is to some people, but I'd just as soon not bother. My feelings for Felix are confusing enough as it is. There's just one thing I want from Felix, and he's not willing to give it._

That left her no reason to want to see him again, and now that she thought about it, no reason to even return to Prox. Menardi was dead and Felix was no more than an aggravation, so what was there left for her there but to go back to being regarded as crazy Menardi's lunatic little sister, to strained smiles that plainly said, "We'll be polite with you, but we really wish you'd just go away"?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of something stirring in a spot near the cavern's ceiling. Interest aroused, she approached the spot and peered closer.

It was a little horde of whitish insects. Karst smiled. _So, there is food here. Strange that I didn't see these earlier. It must have been the wrong time of day for them to be out._

Insects seemed to reproduce quickly enough, so there would be no harm in taking a few of them. She reached up and knocked about ten of them off the wall and into her hand. She was contemplating how much psynergy she would need to kill the things without burning them to ashes, but to her surprise they writhed and fell lifeless without her doing anything. Apparently just the heat of her bare hand was more than they could stand.

She shrugged and headed back to Felix, though something about the little creatures dying at her very touch made her feel oddly sick at heart.

* * *

"Wait..." the Proxian man said, squinting at a distant spot on the shoreline. "I think I see someone."

"Where?" Sheba focused her eyes as hard as she could in that direction. "I don't see anything."

"Jarrabar has exceptional eyesight," the woman informed her. "If it's that hard for him to see it, then you have no chance of making it out."

"Oh, really?" Sheba said dryly. She hated it when people told her she couldn't do something before she'd even had the chance to try.

The two Proxians took off in the direction Jarrabar had been looking, giving no acknowledgment to Sheba's remark. With a mild grumble under her breath, she went after them. Inwardly, though, she was quite pleased to have a lead to follow, and resolved to immediately forgive Jarrabar all his trespasses if what he'd spotted proved to be Felix.

As they got close enough for Sheba to make out their target, her heart rose so high she almost felt as though she were floating. There _was_ something there, and it indeed seemed to be Felix. She raced ahead, but the Proxians were easily able to keep up with her thanks to their longer legs.

But as they neared the person on the shore, he looked up at them, and it was not Felix. Unable to hold back a pang of disappointment, Sheba forced some enthusiasm into her voice as she called, "Jenna!"

"Sheba!" Jenna pounced forward and seized her by the shoulders. "You've gotta help... Felix and the others... they..."

Sheba's heart skipped. "What happened to them?"

* * *

"Felix!" Karst called. She had made up her mind. She would tell Felix that if he wanted to take his chances swimming back to Prox, he was welcome to go for it. He'd probably insist that she come with him, of course, but she would tell him that she didn't care for his bleeding heart sentiments and that she couldn't stand to be around the man who let her sister die.

_Also the man who saved Prox. That means more to me than Menardi's death. I loved her, but she was a warrior and she died a warrior's death._

_ But what does the truth matter? There's no way I can ever fully explain the way I feel towards him, why I can't stand to see him anymore. Menardi's killer, Prox's savior, my betrayer._

"Karst." He'd been sitting against a wall of the cavern, out of view, but he stood now and faced her. His face was as it usually was: fierce and hard. "I've been thinking."

"Not much else to do in here." She held out three insects. "Here... Hungry?"

He looked uncertain for a moment, but then he took them. "Thanks." He bit off the edible parts of one and chewed. "I... I want you to apologize again for Isaac and Garet."

She stared at him. "What?"

"I was too eager to have that issue settled," he explained. "I believed you as soon as you said it, because it was easier. But -"

"You think I was _lying_ when I said I was sorry?"

"You went to all that trouble to get rid of them, and then you apologized just like that," he pointed out. "You can see how I'd be a little dubious, don't you?"

Her fist clenched, wanting nothing more than to reach out and rip his chest open. "Screw you!" she screamed, and stalked away from Felix. Even she was startled by how angry she felt. "You think I apologized_ 'just like that'_? You think that was easy for me! You have no idea what it is like to have innocent blood on your hands... _No damn idea._"

"Karst -"

"Get out of here, Felix. Go swim back to Prox and your friends. I've had enough of you."

"What, and leave you here?"

"I'm getting along just fine here. If need be, I can swim back by myself. I certainly don't need your help."

"That's true, but there's a chance you'll die trying to swim out of here. If I make it safe, you probably will too, but..."

"Stop blathering, Felix. If you're too scared to try it, then at least shut up and leave me alone."

He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. "Look, I can't stand not knowing whether you're alive or dead! Maybe I'm just a fool for feeling this way, but I'm worried about you."

"You consider me the unapologetic murderer of your friends," she retorted, "...and you're worried about me?"

"Like I said, I understand why you did it. I just... I had hoped you could see that it was wrong. Where it counts, you're a good person."

"You have no right to judge me, or anyone." She shoved him back from her. "You're a coward! You were good enough when it came to saving the world, but you just back down when it comes to your friends, don't you?"

"What are you talking about?" An angry look blackened his face. "I did everything I could to save Isaac and Garet."

"I'm not talking about saving lives. I'm talking about friendship. Or have you already forgotten?" She raised an eyebrow. "How you started avoiding me the moment it appeared as though my sister objected to our associating with each other?"

For a moment Felix looked completely blank. Then he scowled. "You have got to be kidding me. That was years ago! And if she had caught us together again, you'd have gotten another beating!"

"Oh, I see. So you decided _for_ me that our friendship wasn't worth that risk?"

"Look, I was just trying to do the right thing!"

"That's exactly your problem!" Emphasizing her point by jabbing him in the chest with her forefinger, she said, "You need to stop wasting all our lives by trying to do the right thing and just take what you want!"

His eyes studied her face. She willed for him to make a move.

"Maybe I should," he admitted. "But what do you expect me to do here? I can't drag you out of here with me."

"Then make me want to go with you."

"Make you want to... Gods, Karst, I don't even know what the hell you want. I was arrogant enough to think you wanted me, but since you walked away from me when I told you how I felt, obviously that's not the case. All I can say is that if you come with me, you can show everyone that you're still alive, and maybe you'll get a chance to redeem yourself for killing Isaac and Garet. But I guess both those things are a little too much like 'doing the right thing' for you, aren't they?"

Karst folded her arms. _He's challenging me. I like that. But I can't let myself be tempted by him again._

"Why don't you go on ahead and find your friends," she said. "...and let me decide what doing the right thing would be, hmm? If you don't hear from me, you can assume I decided to stay here."

"That's not -"

"Your friends need you, Felix. How much longer are you going to dally here with me?"

He scowled. "Look, I could use your help. You're the one who brought us here, so you can find the way out easier than I can."

"So that's what it comes down to, is it? You _need_ me." Felix's scowl deepened. She had to admit, she was enjoying this. This was much better than talk of feelings. "How about we make a deal, Felix?" she said suggestively, running a finger down his chest. He grabbed her hand and pushed it away.

"No deals. Either you care about all the people in Prox who think you're dead, and you want to help me, or you don't."

She hadn't expected him to take the offer, but was interested in his response. The sigh she released wasn't entirely displeased. "Fine, then. I'll help. Just... give me a few minutes, alright?"

Felix didn't answer, just looked at her solidly. At moments like this, it was hard to think of him as weak.

She turned and headed back into the depths of the cavern. Maybe Felix was right; she couldn't spend the rest of her life happily in this place, not after what she'd done to Isaac and Garet. But she was at least going to bid the place a last farewell.

It had been a tempting idea, after all. This cavern was as cut off and isolated from the rest of humanity as, in a way, she was. Maybe Felix could fit in somewhere, but there was no chance of that for her. As much of an outcast as Felix was, he was a hero, whereas she was not, and never could be. She could still hear the one-eyed rock telling her that.

The place wasn't so bad in practical terms, either. It was spacious, beautifully laid out, with definite semblances of rooms connected by hallways. One could hardly be more comfortable within a massive block of ice. It was almost as though the cavern had been designed by human hands. The insects(and perhaps whatever they were feeding on) provided a meager but sufficient food supply, too. It wouldn't be hard to live in the cave.

Karst turned a corner, going for a cozy alcove she was fond of. A hand came out of the shadows, clapping over the cry of shock that instinctively tried to escape her mouth. Another hand fell upon the back of her neck, forming a vice grip that held her head securely in place.

A face more filled with violence than any she'd seen came close to hers. Proxian, but not familiar. "One move," it whispered, "...and I break your pretty neck. Understand?"

She doubted he could kill her before she could kick him hard enough to make him double over in pain, but wasn't willing to bet her life on it. Better to wait for him to slip up.

"So, it looks like the two of you are planning to stay." A prick at her neck made Karst gasp in surprise. "This is my home, little girl. And I'm more than ready to defend it."

From the place where she had been pricked spread a strange and alien coolness, and with it, a dull weakness. The feeling flowed to her limbs, and before long Karst felt herself slump into a conscious but perfectly limp state.

Powerless.

* * *

Author's Notes: Ah, back after a nice break. Thanks very much to IzzyTan, Have a Little Feith, and Strike for the reviews that came in the meantime! To be honest, I didn't manage to rebuild my lead on chapters during my break, so I may have to take another break before this fic is finished. Hopefully not, though, as I'm planning to have the story wrapped up before hitting chapter 16.

Just FYI, the creatures Karst encounters in this chapter are loosely based on a real order of insects, Grylloblattodea, more commonly known as "living fossils" or ice insects. Note that I say "loosely", so look them up if you want an accurate description.


	10. Chapter 10: Giving Up

- Chapter 10: Giving Up -

Piers didn't have a real weapon at hand, but he did keep a knife on his person for cutting up any fish they caught. Even in his panic at being swallowed whole by a gargantuan monster, he had the presence of mind to draw the knife from its sheathe and slam it into the nearest solid object in a desperate bid to stop himself from being pulled down the beckoning gullet. Said object, of course, was the beast's palate. Thick pink blood flowed over Piers's hand.

The thrust succeeded in stopping Piers from being dragged further, but the saliva adhering him to the thing's tongue proved too thick and sticky; he couldn't pull himself free.

The jaws closed, turning Piers's world to complete darkness, barren of any source of light. His thoughts turned to the unconscious Proxian lying a few feet away. "Agatio!" he called. "Wake up, blast it! We're going to die here!"

Agatio gave no response; Felix had beaten him thoroughly senseless. _I'll just have to hang on until Felix and Jenna save us..._

A violent lurching made Piers cry out in sudden terror. First they plummeted; then, with a vicious turn, they soared. Piers clung with all his strength to the hilt of the knife, praying for the gods' deliverance.

_Life is too precious a gift. It should not be stolen away like this - for me or Agatio!_

Desperation made him lash out with the strongest power he had at his command, blasting water down the monster's throat. It didn't dawn on him until a couple seconds after that he had hit upon the right idea. Summoning every reserve of psynergy he had, he turned the blast of water into a virtual flood, forcing hundreds of gallons into the yawning hole before him in but a handful of seconds.

In response, there was a coughing and a sputtering, gigantic bubbles of air rising through the water to burst at the surface. The water Piers deposited began to froth and churn, the monstrous lungs struggling against the deluge. Sweat lined his brow as he summoned more and more water, keeping it up until the frothing began to die down.

When the creature's tongue finally ceased moving, Piers's fingers gradually relinquished their tight grip on his knife, and he blacked out.

How long he was unconscious for, he couldn't say, but when his eyes fluttered open again, he was immediately certain that he was still alive. It was over. The creature had drowned. Which still left one problem.

"How are we going to get out of here?" he asked of the still unconscious Agatio. The creature's mouth was now closed, the heavy jaw sealing off their one exit. For that matter, it was too dark to even see where the exit was. Furthermore, the death of the monster didn't stop its saliva from sticking him in place.

Piers's first thought was to dilute the saliva with some water, but his psynergy was already fairly well drained from powering the Lemurian ship and drowning the creature which had attacked them. If he needlessly expended more, he might not be of any help to Felix and the others, who in all likelihood would need him. He was willing to bet that Agatio had the sheer physical strength to pull the two of them free. But could he be woken?

There was no sense in not trying. When the Proxian again failed to respond to his calls, Piers exerted the slightest bit of psynergy to make drops of water sprinkle down in the general area where he suspected Agatio was. He was rewarded with a grunt.

"Agatio!" he shouted. No more sound came from the Proxian. _Gods, Felix, why did you have to pummel him that way?_ "Agatio? Agatio!"

A very long, low groan came out of the Proxian's mouth, and Piers thought he could make out the faint outline of him stretching forward, pulling himself up. "Whuh..."

"Agatio! Listen, this is Piers. Do you remember me?"

A snort. "You brain dead? Of course I remember you. Why the blazes is it so dark? And what's this gunk I'm covered in?"

"There is no time to explain. Our friends are in danger. Can you pull the two of us free and blast a hole out of this dark place?"

"Bossy little chump, aren't you? What's this about '_our_ friends', anyway?"

"My friends - Felix, Jenna, Isaac, and Garet - and your friend, Karst," Piers said with great patience, though it was beginning to wear thin. It had taken long enough for him to wake Agatio; he didn't care for wasting this much time on explanations during such a crisis. "Can't you pull yourself out for her sake?"

"You jokin'? Right now I barely have the strength to breathe."

Agatio's apathy galvanized him into action. He strained his legs, attempting to take a single step forward, but the saliva stretched and pulled back on his calves no matter how hard he struggled. "You haven't even tried!" he snapped at Agatio.

"Look, all I need's a good little rest and I'll have the strength to drag us out of here, okay? So pipe down."

"Our friends cannot wait that long!"

"Yeah, well, that's the way the dice roll."

"How can you..." Piers bit back the anger in his throat. "How can you not care?"

"For what? You think just because I was partnered with Karst that it should matter to me whether she lives or dies? Think again. If Karst's alive now, you can bet she wouldn't be in any hurry to rescue me, either."

It amazed Piers how quickly this brute had eaten away at his normally ample patience. _Stop. Outrage won't help Felix and the others. Think. There must be __something which Agatio cares about enough to pull himself out. Everyone has something that matters to him. What is it that matters to Agatio?_

It hit him. "If that's how I feel, then I suppose I was mistaken in my assessment of you. I thought you were a warrior."

"What are you talking about?" Piers could tell from the tone of Agatio's voice that he had already hit the mark.

"A warrior keeps on fighting until the battle is won or he is dead. He doesn't give up the moment the fight becomes difficult."

"I'm not giving up, pipsqueak. I just don't have any reason to get up right now."

"A true warrior doesn't need a reason," Piers returned. "Even the weakest and most cowardly of men will fight if they have sufficient reason. For a warrior, the dignity of continuing his battle is all the reason he needs. A warrior, once committed to a fight, would never back down the way you have."

There was silence for a moment, and then a loud snarl of defiance came from Agatio. "I... am... not... backing... down!" he cried out, each word broken off by a gasp of exertion.

The darkness was seared away by a spear of flames, so bright against the surrounding gloom that Piers shielded his eyes to avoid being blinded. The spear pierced the creature's flesh, then rapidly extinguished against the saliva lining the mouth. But Agatio hurled another, and another, repeatedly striking the same spot. In under a minute, a hole the width of Piers's head had been burned into their prison.

Warm, gentle light flowed in through the hole, illuminating the grotesque contours of the monster's gums. Before Piers could properly get his bearings, however, Agatio seized him by his collar and yanked him free. "Wh-"

"Shut up," Agatio grunted as he tore through the lining of the creature's mouth with his free hand. "What is this gunk, anyway? This place is like some sick joke."

He didn't sound as though he actually wanted the question answered, and Piers didn't think it was a good idea to tell him in any case. So he kept quiet as Agatio yanked the two of them through the hole he'd made, out into the freezing air.

"Huh. Where'd your ship go?"

Piers looked around everywhere, but found to his dismay that Agatio was right. The Lemurian Ship was nowhere to be seen.

"We'll have to look..."

"Where?"

"Back in Prox," Piers decided. "If they survived, that's where they'll have gone."

"That sounds like giving up."

Piers sighed. "Well, where do you suggest that we -" He stopped. "You're thinking we should go diving for them."

"Bingo."

Piers wasn't terribly fond of the idea. Truth be told, he'd never thought of himself as a hero; he had always relied upon his companions to help him and direct him. Now he was alone, save for Agatio, who he did not trust. Performing solo heroics was not something he was comfortable with.

But Agatio was right. This was what needed to be done to save their friends. The only help he could get was back in Prox, and there wasn't time to return there. He took a deep breath, getting ready to dive in.

"Hey, wait a second." Piers froze and glanced back at Agatio, who was looking all around them with a frown. "Is this even the same place where your ship was?"

Piers, being nowhere near as familiar with the area as a native Proxian would be, had no idea. But taking in Agatio's inability to recognize where they were, it suddenly hit him. _All that violent lurching after the creature swallowed us... It was leaping away from the ship. The two of us are likely nowhere near the shore from which our ship launched. We are lost, with no chance of reaching our friends in time to save them._

"That's not true, Piers," a new voice said, loud but solemn. Piers looked up with surprised delight.

"Isaac! Garet! I..." He fumbled. "I did not realize I was speaking out loud."

"You weren't," Isaac returned.

"It's a relief to see you two are alive. How-" He stopped, and frowned in puzzlement. "How are you floating like that?"

Isaac and Garet were standing suspended in midair, like dragonflies. It reminded Piers, oddly enough, of the Wise One.

"Pretty nifty, huh?" Garet chuckled. "It looks like Sheba was right about us being gods after all. We just found out about our powers - you know, from almost dying just now."

"You have got to be kidding me," Agatio said, gawking. "You two lived through all that? Well, I guess that's fair... Felix won the fight, after all. So where's Karst?"

"I was hoping one of you could tell me that," Isaac returned.

Piers sighed, feeling a bit ashamed. "To summarize a somewhat long story, while Felix, Jenna, and I were trying to deal with Karst and Agatio, this beast attacked and swallowed Agatio and I. We didn't see what happened to the others."

Agatio uttered an exclamation of surprise and turned around to get a look at the thing which had dared to try to eat him. Isaac looked only vaguely concerned at the revelation that they didn't know what happened to Felix and Jenna, and that was a relief to Piers.

"Isaac..." he said. "You know where Felix and Jenna are, don't you?"

"No, I don't. What was Felix doing back on the ship, anyway?"

Piers didn't care for this irrelevant question. "He came to save you! Do you think he and Jenna might still be in danger?"

A dark look came over Isaac's face. "To save me? How did he know Karst and Agatio had boarded and were trying to kill me?"

"Enough chit-chat," Garet cut in, and pointed at Agatio. "Time to settle a score!" An aura of energy surrounded the Proxian and lifted him into the air.

"Hey!" Agatio cried, squirming around. "Didn't you get what I said a minute ago? Felix won the fight, so we're not trying to kill you anymore!"

"Well, that's very generous of you," Isaac said with a bemused smile.

"Yeah, too bad we don't feel the same way about you," Garet chuckled. He clenched his hand into a fist, making the aura pulse sharply. Agatio let out a sharp cry of pain and surprise as Garet's power flipped him around, depositing him upside down and midair. Garet hooted with laughter.

"Stop that, Garet!" Piers said. "Agatio saved my life but a moment ago! Besides, we don't have time for this. Felix and Jenna are in danger!"

"You kidding? This thug tried to smash my skull open, Piers! And it'll only take me a minute to pay him back."

"No need to hurry, Garet," Isaac interrupted. "Take your time..." He made a gesture, and Agatio's cries of pain and confusion turned to a scream of agony.

"Hey hey, whoa! Careful there!"

"Careful?" Isaac echoed.

"Yeah, I mean, I know you just got this power, but do you know what you're doing there, Isaac?"

"Of course. While you're using psynergy to pull at his tough body, I'm tapping right into the pain centers of his brain." He gave a nod. "It's a lot more effective." Temporarily released from Isaac's full concentration, Agatio was gasping for air.

"Well, you're overdoing it. Besides, Piers is right. We should finish him so we can go find Felix and Jenna."

"I told you, there's no hurry. Felix and Jenna are immortal, like us."

"Well, I'm still worried about them!"

While Isaac and Garet were arguing, Piers used his psynergy to summon a massive wave of water, pulling it towards him. The crest reached the floating Agatio and snatched him out of Garet's grasp, depositing him at Piers's feet. The sound of the wave crashing at the shore made Isaac and Garet turn around.

"You two are not going to torture _or _kill Agatio," Piers said firmly, helping the Proxian to his feet. "He could have left me to die, but instead he pulled me out of this monster. I will not fail to do the same for him. If you want him, you'll have to fight me first."

Isaac looked at him. "You don't honestly think you can win, do you? As a Lemurian, you're near immortal, but you're no god, Piers."

"Victory is not as important as the cause one fights for," he returned.

Isaac sighed. "I can see why Felix chose you for his team. You're just like him: defending the innocent and the guilty alike." He lifted his hand towards Piers. "Well, I believe in fighting for justice."

Garet reached out and caught Isaac's hand. "Whoa, whoa, Isaac! We're not gonna fight with one of our friends, are we? Not with Felix and Jenna still out there!"

"You said you wanted revenge on Agatio for what he did to you."

"We can take care of him later, when Piers isn't around to fight us. Besides, what about Karst? She put her scythe right through your heart! Isn't she more important right now?"

"...I guess you're right." He glanced back at Piers. "We'll be back for Agatio later. Don't think we won't be able to find him. Let's go, Garet."

The two of them soared away, like rocks released from a slingshot.

"Are you alright?" Piers asked Agatio.

"Yeah, fine," he said, stepping away from Piers, legs shaking. "He just stunned me, that's all. What's up with those two, anyway?"

"I have no idea. That was bizarre in more ways than one. Felix never mentioned this side of Isaac to me. He's always struck me as very single-minded, but -" He shook his head and began taking careful strides in the direction Isaac and Garet were heading in. "At the least, it is certain that we must reach Karst before they do."

Agatio nodded, and took off alongside him.


	11. Chapter 11: The Lion's Den

Author's Notes: As I'd feared, I've not been able to regain my lead on this story. So, basically this fic will be on a monthly basis from now on. The climactic chapter 12 will be published on March 1, and then the conclusion will appear on April 1. Sorry about that, but at least it will be finished, eh? Anyway, enjoy this chapter...

- Chapter 11: The Lion's Den -

"'I want you to apologize again'! 'I want you to _apologize again_'!" Felix splashed water on his face as hard as he could, but the icy shock didn't feel like sufficient punishment. "Mars, what was I thinking?"

But he knew what he was thinking. However she felt about him, he was in love with Karst. More than anything, he wanted to reconcile his desire for her with doing the right thing. Pursuing the woman who had killed his friends and wasn't even sorry about it would be wrong.

_But gods... what a stupid way to go about fixing that! If she were unapologetic about it, what good would asking her again have done? But she really was sorry... I should have known that. Why did I have to be such an asshole? If I ever had a chance with her, it's gone now._

Karst's words kept coming back to him: _"You need to stop wasting all our lives by trying to do the right thing and just take what you want!"_ The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she was right. What good had it done anyone for him to abandon Karst in Mars Lighthouse? Isaac and the others could have lit it without his help. He'd have witnessed Karst and Agatio being restored, and this whole mess with the them killing Isaac and Garet, Jenna seeing him act like a vicious animal, the wreck of the Lemurian ship, Piers and Agatio being eaten alive... it all could have been avoided if he'd done what he wanted instead of worrying about doing the right thing.

And what good had it done to refuse Karst's advances? It would have at least been a start to their relationship if he'd given in, and it was what she wanted. And for all his efforts to defend her, Sheba's life would never be the same as before her abduction. What good had his noble intentions done anyone?

A strange voice cut in on his thoughts. "F-Fel..."

It was Karst's voice, but sounding half-strangled. On instinct, he ducked and rolled. A wave of heat singed his back, and he saw that a pillar of flame had just missed him. Rolling to his feet, he scanned the area for his attacker. Since the sound of Karst's voice had given him a clue, it didn't take long to spot him.

He was Proxian, on the tall side, with skin a sickly shade of pink, like a beached squid. His eyes gleamed with a cold maliciousness. He held Karst in front of him, one hand gripping her neck, the other wrapped around her waist. She was limp, suspended by her captor's arms like a hand puppet, yet her eyes watched Felix with an intense anxiety.

"What a willful girl, eh? With the poison I injected her with, she shouldn't have been able to even move her lips, much less get out a warning. Of course, that just proves you mean a lot to her, eh? So by my guess-" Felix strode towards the two of them, planning to tackle the man while he was busy spilling his guts, but he responded by tightening his grip around Karst's neck. A choked gasp came out of her mouth, making Felix stop short. "Un uh uh! I really don't need this girl to protect me from you, so believe me, I won't hesitate one second to snap her neck if you make a move I don't like."

Felix stood frozen in place, eyes darting around for some possible advantage, and finding none.

"Yes, that's what I thought. You care for her as much as she does for you. How sweet."

"You just said you injected her with poison," Felix said, in a tone that made clear he was still contemplating attack.

"Non-lethal," he clarified. "A little something I brewed from a rare plant - rare around Prox, at least. It keeps its victim paralyzed for hours. Though for this little vixen, I'd expect only one hour."

A sort of outrage and revulsion burned through Felix at seeing Karst this way. Limp, helpless, as though she were nothing more than the stereotypical damsel in distress. It was a horrible distortion of her true nature. For that alone, he felt nothing less than hate for the man who had reduced her to this.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice slow and deadly.

Karst croaked out, "Tri... Trieg... Triegen."

Triegen. This was his first time meeting the man, but Felix knew the name from his time in Prox. Faced with the famine brought on by the decay of alchemy, Triegen had taken to murdering his neighbors and eating them. He had nearly claimed a third victim when his crime was discovered, and he fled Prox. A party was organized to hunt him down, but he could not be found. When Felix arrived in Prox, the people were still wary of stepping outside the village borders for fear of Triegen.

It all fell into place: How the cavern had come to be in this place, what kind of animal would use it... Triegen must have melted the cavern out himself over his years of exile. It was a perfect hideaway, almost inaccessible to anyone who didn't already know where it was, yet allowing him to swim out and get food when he needed it.

"What do you want?" Felix demanded. "And why did you wait until we were about to leave to attack us?"

"About to leave?" Triegen chuckled. "Oh, wouldn't that be an irony, if you happen to be telling the truth." His sick smile dissolved into a hard, angry glare. "What I want is to have my home, my peace, to myself. You have invaded here and disturbed both. Tell me now - and the girl will die immediately if you lie - were you sent by Prox? How did you know to search for me here?"

Triegen's outrage seemed genuine. It occurred to Felix that if he could just talk him down, he and Karst might be allowed to leave peacefully. He hated the idea of letting him go after what he'd done to Karst, but such feelings were trivial against the matter of getting her out alive.

"We weren't searching for you," he said, keeping his voice as calm and plain as he could. "Our ship crashed, and when we tried to swim to the surface we came out here. Happening upon this place was just bad luck."

"Bad luck indeed," Triegen agreed. "The worst you've ever had."

Felix's heart sank. _Of course he can't let us go. We'd go right back to Prox and tell everyone where he is if he let us live. On the other hand, that is my bargaining chip._

"Then I guess you don't leave me any choice. Let go of Karst now," he warned, "...or I'll dive into the water, swim back to Prox, and gather a party to capture you."

"Now, that would be quite inconvenient for me. I'd have to immediately leave my home and head for some other place. After killing your companion here, of course. Altogether inconvenient for me... but positively tragic for you, eh?" He twirled a lock of Karst's hair with his finger. "Are you as unimpressed by his bluff as I am, my lady?"

"You mean to kill Karst anyway," Felix pointed out. "She's as much a threat to your peace as I am. You're just trying to negotiate to killing us both."

"Not true. I could also just kill her right now and then try to kill you in the usual fashion. I might fail, but really, I don't need to negotiate for your deaths. You're the one with something to gain here." He reached down with one hand and pulled out a small knife with a hooked blade. "This is the poison I used to immobilize the girl. If you take it willingly, I'll let her live for one hour. If she recovers quickly enough, she'll have a chance to escape."

"You really expect me to trust you on that?"

"It's your one chance of saving her."

_So that's it, then. He thinks I might be so obsessed over Karst that I'd throw my life away in the faint hope that a madman will keep his word and give her a tiny chance of survival. _"No deal."

"Hmm. Pity. I suppose we'll just have to do it this way, then." With that, Triegen flung Karst's limp body at the cavern's entrance pool. She sank like a stone. "Save her if you can!"

"Son of a -" Without thinking, Felix leapt towards the pool.

A blast of bright red and orange flame met him mid-leap, searing at his body, consuming clothing and flesh, igniting his body with pain. Throwing Karst had been nothing more than a distraction, he realized. But somewhat to his surprise, this made no difference to him. It was a risk he would have had to take.

He hit the water, and the scorching heat of the flames was slammed aside by icy cold. The violent switch in temperature was one of the most painful things he had ever felt, and he scrunched his face up at the shock. It was an effort to make his eyes open again so that he could locate Karst.

The cold water had put out the flames, but the intense heat of Mars psynergy was enough to do grievous injury in a split second. Through the blur brought by the water, he could see large patches of his flesh blackened and purpled, flaps of ravaged skin hanging loose. He focused some Ply psynergy into undoing the damage, but it wouldn't be enough. To heal himself properly, he'd need to focus completely on the healing process, and he couldn't afford to do that at the moment. Even if he could, it would take a good deal of time, time he was sure Triegen had no intention of giving him.

Karst was sinking through the water, her limp body oddly positioned on her side. Even her mouth wasn't struggling; it hung slightly open, allowing water to slip in. Only her eyes were still alert, and they looked at him with a mix of confusion and dismay.

Felix swam for her with the most powerful strides he could summon. There was a wonderful sense of victory when he felt his body collide with her warmth. He grabbed hold of her waist with one hand, and clapped the other over her mouth to keep her from losing more precious oxygen.

He kicked his way to the surface, knowing that by this point he was probably under the ice rather than the opening to the cavern, mind scrambling over how he was going to break through it without letting go of Karst.

That question was answered for him when he bumped into the ice. Before he could make a move to break through, a hammer of flames came crashing down towards them. He kicked himself out of the way just in time to avoid being consumed by fire a second time; the ice where they'd been shattered, and the water boiled. He could feel the heat of it.

_Shit! Should have known he'd be waiting for me to try that. Now what? Even if I can swim out of here, Karst will probably drown before I make it. She must have hardly any air as it is. How long was she under before I even reached her?_

He glanced at her face, and though it was hard to tell through the blurring effect of the water, it looked as though she were already about to black out.

Felix's mind went blank in that moment - from panic, from despair, and perhaps from simple indecision - and he acted without true thought. He covered Karst's mouth with his own, sharing his remaining oxygen with her. Her breath promptly sucked the air from his lungs.

The second after, it hit him how foolish this was. He couldn't save Karst, only postpone her death by a minute or so. He should have just left her to die and try to escape. It's what Karst herself would have wanted him to do. He could hear her scornful voice: _"Pathetic... not only are you too weak to save me, you're too much of a fool to even save yourself!"_

It didn't matter. Just like jumping into the water after her, it was something he had to do. His only real misgiving was at leaving Sheba behind, and even the thought of that responsibility couldn't dissuade him. Karst was a good person; even if it was futile, he had to try to save her, just as he had had to try to protect Sheba.

Between the two of them, their air quickly ran out. Felix's head began to feel fuzzy. He couldn't concentrate on a way out of the situation anymore; he just wanted to keep holding onto Karst until the end.

A feeling of warm contact made him start. Karst had reached up to press her hand against him. It felt like she was focusing her psynergy into her palm, to warm him.

_Unbelievable. She's already starting to recover from that poison? Triegen could have lied about how potent it is, but why would he?_

In truth, he wasn't all that surprised that Karst was strong enough to fight off the poison, any more than he was surprised that she was compassionate enough to give him the warmth of her psynergy. That was who she was.

The layer of ice above them was abruptly blasted apart. He flinched, expecting the end, but this second burst of Mars psynergy did not go past the surface of the water. It was clearly not intended to kill anyone.

A minute before he would have agonized over whether or not this was a trap, but at this point he had no choice. It was either head for the surface and probably get killed, or stay where he was and allow both himself and Karst to drown. Even if it was a trap, there was still a chance Karst would survive, thanks to her Proxian resistance to Mars psynergy.

He kicked his way back up, and gasped as his head broke the surface. Not pausing even to catch his breath or look around to see what the situation was, Felix propped Karst's head up on the surface of the ice and put a hand in front of her face to check that she was still breathing. The feeling of her warm breath against his palm was a greater relief to him than his own first gulps of air. _Gods, I don't know what I'd have done if I had lost her to the world. I don't think I ever could have forgiven myself._

"Felix!" a voice snapped. Felix's gaze darted up, and his heart brightened at the sight of his sister. She glared down at him. "What are you doing? Don't you remember what Karst did to Isaac and -"

"She saved my life," Felix interrupted, then looked around for Triegen. Sheba and two Proxians(he recognized them as Jarrabar and Delihra) were chasing him back into the cavern, sending blasts of psynergy at him. Satisfied that they could handle him, he turned back to Jenna. "Is... is there any hope that any of the others survived?"

She shook her head. "We don't know. I... I just had to get myself to safety."

"I'm glad you did," he reassured her. "We at least have a chance at finding the others now. How did you know where we were?"

"It was Sheba. She couldn't believe you'd drowned, so she figured you had to be somewhere near the shores. We kept wandering around there until she could pick up your thoughts. She told us there wasn't time to find the way in, so those two Proxians just blasted a hole into this cave."

Felix blinked. "She can pick up thoughts from that far away? I thought her psynergy only worked when she's just an arm's reach away."

"Well... I think it's different with you."

Before Felix could ask what she meant by that, Karst managed to groan, "Felix..."

His eyes snapped back to her. "Are you okay?"

With a grunt, she slapped her hands to the edges of the hole Jenna had made and pushed herself up, out of the water. She was clearly weak, and Felix noticed that her legs were still dead weight; if he chose to hold on to her, there was no chance she could break free. But he made no effort to stop her. He simply climbed out of the water himself and watched her prop herself up into a crude sitting position.

Her eyes zeroed in on Felix. "Why... did you save me like that?"

He shrugged. "You did the same for me."

"What I did... wasn't the same thing at all."

Felix might have replied to that, but his mind was distracted with thoughts of Sheba, Jarrabar, and Delihra. Their quarry didn't stand much chance against the three of them all together, but it was still dangerous, and one of them - maybe Sheba - could be killed. He wanted to go after them, but he couldn't leave Karst alone, and leaving her with Jenna didn't seem like a good idea. On the other hand, he hated to think of what Jenna would think if he asked her to leave him alone with Karst...

_Screw it. Sheba and the others could be in danger, and I'm supposed to be the leader; I can't be worrying about my personal dramas._ "Jenna, go after Sheba. Make sure she's safe. I'll look after Karst, and come after you as soon as she's recovered. If I don't show up, meet me back here."

Jenna stared back at him. "No."

"What?" He felt anger in his voice. He didn't have patience for insubordination in the middle of a crisis, not even from his sister.

"Look, Felix, something is going on with you. I don't know _what_ it is," - she paused to jab her finger at Karst - "...but it's pretty obviously something to do with her. You've been acting crazy ever since she and Agatio attacked our ship - heck, maybe even before then! I don't know what kind of freaky spell she's got you under, but I'm not going to just... just walk away and let it happen!"

"Jenna -" He stopped. _Shit. What can I say to even make her think it's possible that she's wrong? If I had seen Jenna act the way I did in my fight with Agatio, and after, I would have thought she'd lost her mind, too._

Felix stood up and turned in the direction Sheba had headed. "Alright, then. You stay here with Karst. Don't let anything happen to her, understand?"

A voice came from above, like a god speaking down to his new creation. "I'm sorry to hear you ask Jenna to do something like that, Felix. I can see she must be right about you."

Felix looked up. Through what he assumed was the same hole in the cavern ceiling Jenna and Sheba had come through, Isaac and Garet floated in.


	12. Chapter 12: With Friends Like These

- Chapter 12: With Friends Like These -

"Your head's a mess, Felix," Isaac said, with the same tone as if he were telling him that his boots were muddy. "Want to know how Sheba really found you? Your chaotic thoughts stick out a mile away."

"It's not just because of Karst," Garet put in, folding his arms smugly. "Felix hasn't been the same since he got taken to Prox years ago. He takes after Saturos and Menardi. That's what his problem is."

While Felix struggled for something to say to his friends' bizarre appearance, Jenna exclaimed, "Isaac! Garet! You guys are alive! How did you do it?"

"Hey, how _didn't_ we do it? We're gods now, Jenna," Garet smirked, flexing his bicep at her. "What do you think of me now, huh?"

"You're a god too, Jenna," Isaac said. "Sheba was right all along. If you lend Garet and me a hand, we can fix things for Felix."

There was a moment of silence. _What in the name of Mars is going on here? Is that really Isaac and Garet? What happened to them?_

"Um..." Jenna said. "What do you mean by that, Isaac? 'Fix things'?"

"I guess Sheba never told you - or maybe she doesn't even know - but gods can do more than just read minds. We can change them. Somebody probably did just that to Felix... that's why he's been acting so strange. It will be a complicated job, but we can get him back to how he was before."

"Isaac... that's... Are you sure that someone did that to Felix? I mean... If we do this even a little bit wrong..."

"Does it matter? Even if we can't recreate the way he was perfectly, we can make him a lot better than he is now. I read his mind when I came in, Jenna, and believe me, it's a frightening mess. Guilt at things that aren't his fault, a constant uncertainty about right and wrong, perverse lust for one of our enemies, all bouncing off each other in total chaos. Do you really want to leave him with all that?"

While the two of them debated, Felix silently crouched down beside Karst. He wasn't sure what was going on yet, but at least one thing was sure: Isaac wasn't going to be convinced to let Karst live.

"Those two are completely insane," Karst whispered to him. "And believe me, I know insane."

"This doesn't make any sense," he whispered back. "They say that power corrupts, but this quickly? Less than a day ago, Isaac was one of the most sensible men I've known. Besides, where did this power -" He stopped himself. "That doesn't matter right now. Can you move your legs yet?"

"No. But it doesn't matter. Leave me and get out of here. I'll distract them as best I can."

"I'm not letting you sacrifice yourself."

"It's not a sacrifice." Her tone was derisive. "You plan to save me? Unless you can climb up to the hole Sheba's friends made with Isaac miraculously not noticing, the only way out is through the water. And if you put me in there now, I'll drown. So what are you going to do? Defeat both your friends?"

Before he could answer, Jenna's voice hit a fever pitch volume, blowing away their whispered words. "No! He's my brother, and I won't let you! We're not taking chances with him until we're sure of what's wrong with him... and until I'm sure that you two are really Isaac and Garet!"

"Jenna, you're talking nonsense," Isaac said.

"No, I'm not! I saw the two of you die... and the Isaac and Garet I knew weren't gods, and they sure wouldn't be acting like this! Felix hasn't even had a chance to explain himself, and you want to go playing around with his mind!"

"I think Jenna's got a point, Isaac," Garet put in. "Don't you?"

"No."

"Oh, come on! We've got all the power in the world, and you don't think we can take the time to figure out what's going on here? Have you forgotten how to use your brain, or what?"

"You're willing to just let Felix live with this insanity in the meantime?" Isaac's face was no longer cold and impassive. His eyes burned with anger and determination. "Well, I'm not! Saturos and Menardi have turned Felix against us for the past five years... I'm not letting it go on any longer."

Jenna gasped. "Gods, Isaac, you're talking about Felix as if he we were your servant or something! Who are you?"

"Listen to yourself, pal," Garet said. "Do you realize how stubborn you sound? I've always supported you all the way, but now y-"

Garet's admonition turned into a scream of surprise as the aura surrounding him disappeared, leaving him to plummet to the hard ice below. His howl of pain almost completely drowned out the sound of one of his leg bones breaking in two.

"Garet!" Felix heard himself cry, in spite of his resolve to keep quiet. "Garet, are you alright?"

"D-dammit," Garet gasped, his face clenching in pain, tears running down his face. "What happened? Where did my power go!"

"You never really had any," Isaac answered. "I'd begun to suspect... I was just subconsciously letting some of my godly power flow to you, using it to answer your desires. I'm a god, Garet, but you're no more than another adept. So I don't have to listen to your arguing with me any more."

"Y-you did this to me?" Garet grit his teeth. "Isaac, I'm your best friend! We're all your friends! How can you -"

"Don't give me that load of nonsense, Garet!" Isaac almost bellowed the words. "You were _never_ my friend! A friend is someone who respects you, who stands up for you, who supports you, even when he doesn't completely agree with you. The only thing that ever made us friends was that I knocked some sense into you when you were going to get yourself killed over some stupid possessions! I tried to be a friend to you, Garet, but you never once were a friend to me. You asked me to take charge, but you just made fun of me whenever you disagreed! That's not what friends do, Garet."

"H-hey... That's not fair, I was just teasing 'cause you're my friend, and..."

"Jenna can heal you if she wants. I've had enough of you." Isaac folded his arms, closed his eyes, and let out a weary sigh. "I don't have to put up with you anymore. Felix was the one who was my real friend, and he'll be my friend again."

"Open your eyes, murderer of my sister!" Karst's voice made both Isaac and Felix start. Cursing inwardly, Felix looked to see she had managed to get to her feet and was firing a wide beam of fire and lava directly at Isaac. For a moment, he thought Isaac would be burned to nothing but ashes... and he wasn't sure that wouldn't be for the better.

It was not to be, however. Karst's power hit the aura around Isaac but went no further. Only the light of the flames penetrated, forcing Isaac to shield his eyes from the brightness. "I'm not a murderer... I killed your sister in a fair fight! You're the one who likes ambushes and stabbing people in the back! You and Agatio don't deserve the same mercy your sister got. I'm going to make sure you suffer before you die!"

_Damn it! They're not leaving me any choice, either of them._

Karst wanted him to use the distraction to escape, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't let Karst die, and leaving Jenna and the others in Isaac's hands wasn't something he felt comfortable with, either.

He had no choice.

Isaac was floating towards Karst, more or less; blinded by the light of her flames, he was probably following their path back towards her. As soon as he came in low enough, Felix leapt directly at him with all the strength in his legs. Upon colliding with his old friend, he threw his arms around his torso in a solid hold. Isaac got out a cry of surprise, and then together they plummeted to the ground, smashing through the thick ice with their combined momentum, grappling against each other with all their strength even as the icy water consumed them both.

"Felix!" Sheba screamed, having arrived just in time to see him fall through the ice. A moment later, a violent burst of psynergy fumed up from the water, like the aftershock of an incredible explosion. _Oh no oh no I shouldn't have left him I shouldn't have left him!_

She ran towards the pool, but she knew she was too far away to reach him in time to do anything. This made it rather alarming when she arrived at the pool and he still had not surfaced again. "Felix!"

Nothing. Sheba turned on the person nearest to her: Karst. "What's going on?" she demanded. "Who is he fighting?"

Karst looked at Sheba, her face blank. "His friend, Isaac. He went mad and attacked all of us."

While Karst was talking, Sheba was mind-reading her. A person's thoughts always answered more honestly and more completely than their lips. As at Mars Lighthouse, Karst's mental defenses were down, and she seemed completely unaware of what Sheba was doing. Her thoughts flowed to the little blond adept, disjointed and confused: _Because of what I did to Isaac... That's why he went mad, why he attacked... That's why Felix fought his friend... That's why he's good as dead now... Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead... Because of me... Because of me..._

"What did you do to them!" Sheba screeched at Karst, horrified by her thoughts. She grabbed at Karst's little shirt and pulled her face down to hers. "Answer me, you... you witch! What did you do! What..."

But her anger was only a poor mask for her despair. Sheba's head slumped, her throat heaved a massive sob, and the tears flowed. _If I'd just been a few seconds sooner... if I'd just..._

_ Poor girl..._ Sheba froze. That thought had definitely not come from her. _She really cared about Felix, and she couldn't do anything. _The thoughts became increasingly resolute. _It's not fair. She should not have to suffer, and Felix should not have to die. There has to be a chance left for him, so long as someone is willing to take the risk._

For once, Sheba wasn't sure who she was mind-reading. It _had_ to be Karst, but it didn't "sound" like her. But she didn't care who it was; all that mattered was that whoever it was had a point. And if anyone was willing to take the risk for Felix, it was her.

As she moved to jump into the water, however, a hand caught her by the shoulder. "Karst, let go!" she cried. "I have to save him!"

She sneered. "You think you can drag him out of that icy ocean, with your scrawny little muscles and your skin as thin as flower petals? I'll do it." Karst shoved her back and dove in.

But she had not yet reasserted her defenses against Sheba's mind-reading, allowing her to pick up a more reassuring message: _Felix would never forgive me if I let Sheba die._ Karst couldn't be worried about Felix forgiving her or not unless she was confident that she could save him.

Sheba clasped her hands tightly together. _But... Can I rely on her? She's crazy..._

"Ow ow OW! What are you doing, Jenna?"

She couldn't help but turn and look; it was Garet, trying to fight Jenna away from his leg. "I'm fixing your leg, Garet, if you'll just let me set it back in place!"

"Leave it alone! Are you in love with me, or something? Your own brother is drowning, and you want to_ fix my leg_!"

"You really think Karst would let me save him? She'd just kill me too!"

"No, Jenna," Sheba said solemnly. "She wouldn't. The last thing she'd want would be to kill you."

Jenna's eyes popped over to Sheba with excitement. "You mind-read her? Do you know what she did to Felix?"

"She didn't do anything to Felix. Felix... Felix is the same as he was when I first met him, except that he's stronger, braver, and... and wiser, I think." She stopped, thinking over what she'd just said, what it meant, and also thinking about why she was so calm despite Felix's peril. "He's not going to die," she added, conviction in her voice. "If he doesn't pull out on his own, Karst will save him. She's insane and cruel, but she still wants to believe she's doing the right thing, just like everyone else. She can't go on believing that if she lets Felix die."

"Sheba, honey," Jenna said, her voice tense with sadness. "She and Agatio started all this, remember?"

"But she didn't try to kill Felix. She -"

There was a splash of water accompanied by a pair of gasps for air, and she whirled around to see Karst shove Felix up out of the water. Sheba scrambled to help pull him out.

"Felix!" Jenna approached but seemed afraid to actually touch her brother. "Are you okay? What happened to Isaac?"

He gasped for air a few moments, then managed, "I... I threw him off-guard. When I attacked him, I think that made him doubt whether he was really all-powerful... or maybe, he didn't really have it in him to kill me. So he just fought me with knees and fists... like we were kids again. I don't know if I could have beaten him, or if he would've gotten the guts to use his power again... Something grabbed us both, pulling us down. I couldn't see what it was... Probably undertow, but it could have been a sea creature, or... I don't know. That's when Karst caught me, pulled me away from whatever it was, but it still had a hold of Isaac. I don't know what happened to him, but..."

He finally paused in his rambling and looked around. "Where... where is Karst, anyway?"

"Huh?" Sheba said. "She's right -"

But looking back at the surface of the water, Sheba saw that she was mistaken. Karst was gone.


	13. The Orange OpenArmed Sunset of Goodbye

Author's Notes: Well, here we are at last. I have to admit this fic, while not bad overall, didn't turn out nearly as well as my usual work. The plot didn't go like I wanted it to, and some of the character interactions didn't quite "click" as my enthusiasm for the story petered out. I tried to make up for this somewhat by putting a double dose of effort into this last chapter, so as to go out on a high note. But feel free to let me know if I've failed at producing a good finale.

I have more self-indulgent musings on this novella and the possibility of any future GS fics from yours truly, but I'll save that for the "Death Comes Knocking" thread on The Land of Ice and Fire forum, so that you can all go ahead and enjoy the wrap-up of the story.

* * *

- Chapter 13: The Orange Open-Armed Sunset of Goodbye -

The cold sharp stone cut into his hand, releasing a trickle of warm blood over his dried-up, freezing palm, but Felix dismissed the pain and continued climbing. It was a steep ascent - practically vertical, in fact - but he would make it. He just had to keep moving, hand over hand, always finding one foothold higher than the last. His boots were suffering as much wear and tear as his hands, but he would make it.

A cold, but thankfully steady breeze blew against him. There was no danger of him being knocked off. He had enough experience to know how to find a solid place to put his hand or foot. And if he miscalculated... Well, that was a danger he was willing to accept. Certain risks were worth it.

_She's not dead,_ he told himself, an incentive to keep pushing onward and upward. _She's not dead._

* * *

"She's not dead," Agatio had told him days ago.

Felix swallowed the lump those words brought to his throat, aware that the others' eyes were on him. "How do you know?"

"Heh. I don't, I guess... It's just that I've worked with her for long enough that I think I'd feel it if she were." He looked out the window, towards the sea. "Don't it seem funny, though... She saves you, then gets pulled under herself? That picture doesn't make much sense to me."

"Perhaps..." Piers hesitated, some unease on his face. "Perhaps she didn't _want_ to make it out alive."

"No," Felix said, more harshly than he'd intended. "I spoke to her just before what happened. She wanted to live."

"Felix." Piers' voice was gentle. "If she's alive and well, why has she disappeared?"

Agatio snorted. "That's easy. She wants to be left alone. And if you guys are smart, you'll give her what she wants."

"No problem with that," Jenna said, and shot a glance at her brother. "Is there, Felix?"

* * *

Felix grasped the next ledge and exerted all the strength in his arms to heave himself up, muttering under his breath, "If that bitch... thinks she can just... huff... walk away without a word... nnnnup..." He managed to get his torso past the precipice. "...she's got another thing coming. Dammit."

He took a look up the cliffside, groaning inside at how far he had yet to go. _Could she really have come all this way? She's in nearly as good shape as I am, I guess, and more resilient against this damn cold, but still... Would she come such a difficult way?_

His question was answered by the sight of a faint impression in the snow: a fading footprint. And who else would have come this way recently?

With that encouragement, he got to his feet and began the next stretch of climbing. There was no chance in seven hells that he was going to let her get away.

* * *

"I'm not going to let you get away this time," Jenna said, shoving him back into a chair. "Not after what happened! After what's been happening these past couple days, I... I feel like I don't even know you!"

"That's just it, Jenna," Felix said. "You don't know me. I'm not the same Felix you watched get swept away by a flood. In a way -" He sighed. "...you could say he really did drown back then."

"Don't get all poetic on me! I stayed by your side for months, Felix; I know you better than anyone! You going after Karst after all she's done just doesn't make sense!"

"No." Felix stood back up, pushing Jenna away. "I'm sorry, Jenna, but you don't know me better than anyone. To really know me, you had to have known me while I was in Prox. That was where I became myself for the first time. Before that, I was just some kid who had no idea what to do with his life."

"You were my brother!"

"I still am!" He gripped Jenna's shoulders in the most reassuring way that he could. "And always will be. It's just that I'm the asshole brother who ran off with the girl his family doesn't like."

"Gods, Felix! Isaac is DEAD because of Karst, and you're comparing her to -"

"Believe me, Karst would take that back if she could. And she only attacked Isaac because he killed her sister. If that makes her a maniac..." He ran a hand lightly through Jenna's hair. "...then I guess I'm a maniac too, because I'd kill anyone who did that to you."

"It's not about whether Karst was right or wrong, Felix," Sheba spoke up. Her voice was quiet and sad. "She... she's crazy. I mind-read her after you and Isaac fell into the water, and her thoughts were just a confused jumble."

"Maybe because she was upset?" he said impatiently.

"It wasn't like that! I've mind-read people who were upset before. This was different. There were pieces and impressions, but none of it was in any sensible order. Felix, I don't think she even knows why she does what she does!"

"Sheba, it's like I've told you. You just don't understand anyone." At the hurt look on her face, and the reproving glare on Jenna's, he folded his arms. "Look, _I know_ Karst doesn't understand herself. But I understand her. That's what matters. And I thought you said you were okay with me going after her."

"Felix..." Sheba clasped her hands together. She looked close to crying. "I want you to be happy. I really do. And I'm scared that you're not going to be happy with Karst. I'm scared that she's going to hurt you."

Instinctively he reached out to pull Sheba close and comfort her, but Jenna slapped his hands away. She wrapped Sheba in her own warm embrace, still glaring at her brother with reproach.

Felix swallowed. "I'm sorry, Sheba. There's no such thing as a guarantee of happiness. If there were, I... I wouldn't want it. I need danger to feel alive." He looked away. "That's part of who I am. I didn't want either of you to know that - especially not you, Jenna. But after what I did to Agatio, and the way I kissed Karst afterwards, there's no use trying to hide who I am now, is there? I'm sorry. But this is who I've been since before we met again at Mount Alef. If you don't want to think of me as your brother anymore, that's your decision, but there's no going back for me now. I know what I'm getting into. And you two can't come with me."

Sheba's jaw fell. "What? No! You can't abandon me, Felix! I'm... I'm not ready for..."

"You can stay with Jenna. I've been thinking this over, and I think it's for the best."

"But don't you understand? If you want to be with Karst, I can live with that! I won't say a bad word about her, I promise."

Realizing that she meant what she said, Felix felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his heart. "Thanks for saying that. It means a lot to me." He shook his head. "But I don't want you tied up in what's going on between me and Karst right now. Before I would have brought you along just because it's the right thing to do, but I've thought better of it. Sometimes you have to stop worrying about what's right and just take what you want."

"That's a _horrible_ thing to say!" Jenna snapped.

"Maybe, but it's what I believe. ...Don't worry, Sheba; I'm not leaving forever. I'll come back for you in a few months. Once Karst and I have sorted out what we want to do."

* * *

Hopefully by then, Sheba would realize she didn't need him anymore. She had told him that he was a guiding light for her, and he had to admit that made him feel very useful, but she was experienced enough in the world at this point to start figuring things out on her own.

But if she didn't feel ready... Well, he'd never said that he was giving up doing the right thing altogether.

Jenna had raged against his decision for a while, but she let him go in the end. "I know you better than you think," she'd told him. Then she hugged him, so hard that it hurt. "And I think you're making a mistake."

"She's right, you know," Piers had said to him after. "Leaving now, when we have yet to determine what went wrong with Isaac, is very poor judgment. Besides, you would regret leaving Sheba under any circumstances."

"Would I?" He shook his head. "Those things will have to wait, Piers. Right now I need to find Karst. I'm not letting the rest of you come between me and her."

Piers studied him sadly. "I suppose I can understand why you would be so impatient. Go, then. I only hope that you will not hate yourself for this later."

As if that would have made much difference. He'd spent most of the last few years hating himself. By now he'd was used to it.

* * *

His hands were now numb against the cold rock. His fingers were raw and painlessly bleeding. His breaths were harsh, labored.

Rather than discouraging, these struggles invigorated Felix. Knowing that his heart still beat and his limbs still climbed against all this filled him with awareness of his own strength. Everything he did involving Karst was hard, and it did not escape him that he liked it that way.

It was not without some disappointment that his hand clasped what felt like a horizontal surface and, pulling himself up, he saw that he had reached the next ledge. The final one, by the looks of it. The ledge extended back twenty meters or so, and there in the cliffside was the opening of a cavern. There was a good chance that this was Karst's hiding hole.

He focused on getting over the edge, pressing both palms against the ground to hoist himself up. His legs struggled for the best footholds they could stumble upon, and he crawled up onto flat ground. He'd planned on lying there a minute to catch his breath, but glancing up, he saw Karst at the entrance to the cavern. He scrambled to his feet, brushing the snow from his clothes and hair.

"So, you made it, Felix. Shall we finish this?"

She was brandishing a scythe at him. He wondered briefly where she got it from, since her old one had been lost in the wreck of the Lemurian ship, but then he noticed it was simply a tree branch with a rusted metal blade wedged into the top. A makeshift weapon, though undoubtedly it was more deadly in Karst's hands than a proper weapon would be in the hands of an average warrior.

She made a beckoning gesture with the scythe, like a fisherman hauling in his net, a wicked smile on her face. "Come on, Felix. Draw your sword and let's see if you can avenge your friend Isaac."

Holding his hands up at chest level, he took two deliberate steps towards her. "That's not what I came here for."

"No? Then you must not have seen the way he squirmed and writhed in his futile struggle to reach air. I could have saved him, you know. It just wasn't important to me."

Felix only needed to consider that for two seconds before pronouncing, "Bullshit."

The smile did not fade from her face. "If you think you can lure me into lowering my guard, you're a fool. I'll give you five seconds to draw your sword, and then I'm attacking no matter what you do. Five!"

He sighed and began unstrapping his sword from his back. _Why does it have to be this way again? I promised myself I wouldn't fight her anymore. Fighting is just the easy way out; it doesn't fix anything between us._

Clasping his scabbard, he brought it in front of him and drew his sword.

Karst charged, swinging her scythe in an overhead arc. A hopelessly direct move. Felix simultaneously blocked the strike and landed a kick just below her knee, sending her falling face first. She ducked and rolled, escaping both Felix and the impact of her fall, but losing the scythe. Without pause, Felix brought his sword down on it, splitting it in two.

Back on her feet, Karst summoned a volcanic eruption from the ground beneath him. He stepped to the side, avoiding the attack, and tackled Karst. They went down together, but Felix promptly brought the edge of his blade to her throat.

"Now stop this bullshit," he said between heavy breaths. Though Karst had obviously not given her best, the fight had excited him the same as his bout with Agatio had, and he fought back the urge to act the same as he had then. He could feel her sensual curves beneath him. "What happened to Isaac wasn't your fault."

"You'd better check your facts again," she snapped. "He went crazy because of my attack, and then -"

"Shut up. I've been thinking about what happened to Isaac, and there's only one power in Weyard to match what he was showing: the power of the Lighthouses. I think we were wrong about the Golden Sun going to Alex. It must have gone to Isaac. That's why we went crazy, and it's because of that that he went after me. It all would have happened without your help."

"Well, that's a convenient theory."

"Dammit, it's the only thing that makes sense!" He forced himself to climb off of her, picked up his scabbard, and put his sword away again. "We're not even sure Isaac is dead. I threw him off when I attacked, made him doubt his immortality. I see how you'd be tempted to call that a closed case. It's a lot easier that way, isn't it? But maybe he just swam away to nurse his pride, and started to come to his senses. Maybe he's out there somewhere, trying to decide what the right thing to do with his godhood is."

Karst stood up and folded her arms. "If you don't want revenge for your friend, then why are you hounding me?"

"Things haven't changed between us. I still want you."

He realized this sounded embarrassingly crude as soon as he said it, but failed to see the room for misinterpretation until Karst spoke again, "Suppose I'm not in the mood?"

"Not just like that, dammit." The air around them was still cold, the wind biting. He gave her a hard look. "Don't you dare go back to playing dumb now. I admit, for a while there you had me fooled, thinking all you wanted from me was my body. Even you saving my life didn't prove that wrong; you'd have done the same for anyone. But Sheba told me what you were thinking just before you dove in after me." Karst's face clenched. _She hates being mind-read even more than I do. Neither of us wants other people to know who we are._ "She told me you were worried about how I would feel if she died."

"That little bitch needs to learn to leave other people's thoughts alone."

He smiled faintly. "I agree. But don't call her that. Ever."

"Besides, your deduction, while understandable, is dead wrong," she said with a toss of her head. "I knew if I let that brat get herself killed, you'd come after me, seeking vengeance. That's why I wouldn't let that happen."

"Nice try. But I'm not buying it." She was in reach now, and her defenses were down. In one swift motion he had one hand around her waist and the other at the back of her head, forcing her lips to his. She made an effort to pull away, but when it came to sheer physical strength, he was her superior, and she soon gave in. Most likely it hadn't even been an earnest attempt, just an instinctive reaction, or a little test of his determination.

If it was an earnest attempt, then Karst had to be the most fickle woman alive, because the moment after she gave in, her mouth opened against his, allowing the kiss to deepen. The heat of her in the midst of the icy winds all around them was revitalizing, and he forgot himself. He knew only her, the one spot of warmth in this cold place. Her long, ragged strands of hair blowing against his face. The taste of her, sweet and raw. The fingernails of her right hand, digging so hard into his arm that he wouldn't be too surprised if she were drawing blood. Both sides of her passion burned into him: love and anger.

Realizing that, he felt the link between them solidify. It was as though he was instantly aware of her every thought, because it paralleled one of his. He loved her because she had fought to the death for Prox; she loved him because he had saved Prox. He hated her because of what she'd done to Isaac and Garet; she hated him because of what he'd done to Saturos and Menardi. He loved her because she was different from her sister; she loved him because he was different from other southerners. He hated her for betraying him after he lit Jupiter Lighthouse; she hated him for betraying her after she trapped Ivan and Isaac. It wasn't just that their feelings towards each other were so strong. It was that the feelings were the same. And as angry as they were at each other's sins, they understood and forgave.

Needing to catch their breath, Felix released her. After a few gasps for air, Karst managed a smirk. "All you've proved is that there's an animal allure between us."

"It goes deeper than that." There was no doubt in his voice now. "We understand each other. I don't think anyone else in the world can understand us. Not really."

"I don't need anyone."

"Then why were you so upset about how I stopped being friends with you, back in Prox?"

She looked away. "If it will stop this, I'll tell you the truth: Yes, I feel something for you. But love just isn't worth the trouble, Felix. Let it go."

His shoulders shook with amusement. "Never. You might as well stop running now, Karst, because I'm not giving up on you. Even if I eventually decide you aren't worth the trouble, I'd keep after you just because I don't believe in quitting. And as the saying goes, you can't escape what you desire."

"You smug bastard." She snorted. "And what do you think the two of us will do now? Chained to each other like that."

"It's no different from being chained to Prox. You don't regret staying in Prox, do you?"

"I'm not in Prox now."

"But you wish you were." She said nothing. "So do I. We can go back there, and…"

"…and live happily ever after?" she mocked. He wanted to wipe that sneer right off her face – preferably by kissing her again.

"No, just live _together_," he retorted. "Happiness isn't always part of it."

"It couldn't be, not when either of us is involved." She reached out to stroke the line of his jaw with a finger. "Just so long as we understand each other, Felix."

What was this – a matter of pride, for both of them? Or was this about freedom? Each of them refusing to promise that they would always make the other happy? But not even wedding vows held such a promise. _Why are we so afraid of each other?_

Whatever the case, he didn't want to be outdone by her. "You sultry bitch." He snatched the hand teasing his jawline and pressed his lips to it. Laughing, she pulled away, only to be quickly backed up to the side of the cliff, where he pinned her.

As he turned his head to nip at her neck, she murmured, "Maybe I _am_ in the mood now."

That made him hesitate a moment; he hadn't really realized what he was doing. But with no fresh guilt on his head this time, he couldn't find a reason to stop. Something told him that there was a reason, but the curves of her shoulders and the way she tilted her head made it impossible to remember what it was.

They found their way into the cave Karst had emerged from. It was smaller than he would have thought, but suitable. He attempted to pull off the woolen coat she was wearing, but she pushed his fumbling hands away and began removing it herself. Feeling foolish for a moment, he peeled off his vest and the shirt underneath in one go.

When he could see again, Karst was looking over his torso appreciatively. Though she had removed her coat, she still had one of her shirts that stopped above her midriff. This annoyed him even more than the sight of her naval aroused him, and he reached out to rip it off. She evaded him and began removing her long pants and boots instead. Appeased by that for the moment, he ran a hand over one of her smooth thighs.

Her other knee shot out, slamming into his stomach hard enough to stop a charging boar. He fell onto his hand and knees, using his other hand to clutch his stomach while his lungs struggled for air and his head struggled to make sense of what had just happened. He had expected her to be rough, but a blow like that was an impediment to what they were doing, to say the least.

Pulling her pants back on, Karst smirked and remarked, "Notice that I used the word 'maybe' in that last sentence."

With him still wheezing, she grabbed both her wool coat and his vest and walked back outside, to the edge of the cliff.

Felix managed, "What are you –"

She tossed his vest over the edge.

In an instant he was on his feet and beside her. "Are you fucking crazy! It's freezing out here! What –"

She cut him off with a laugh. "Felix, Felix… They landed on the next ledge. If you can't even climb a couple hundred meters without a shirt, then you're hardly tough enough to be worth my attention, are you?"

"You know damn well I couldn't have made it up here if I couldn't do that! What the fuck are you doing?" He didn't know which pissed him off more: her tossing his clothes over the edge, or the cancellation of their lovemaking.

"Of course I know you can do it," she answered, pulling her coat back on. "The point is for you to actually do it. See you at the bottom!"

With that, she began climbing down the cliff. For a moment, he had considered grabbing her coat and tossing it down after his clothes, but quickly realized this would be a weak gesture. As a Proxian, that wouldn't be nearly as much a challenge for her as it would be for him. Instead, he just stared after her for a minute and then, with a laugh, followed her down, restraining the impulse to shiver as the cold wind bit without remorse at his bare flesh.

_"Maybe", my ass. She wanted it as badly as I did, maybe more; I could see it in her eyes. But she still turned me down, just as I did to her before. She had to show she could do the same as me. _Or maybe it was because despite her best efforts to flee him, he had caught her – and to make up for that, she had to prove that she still had power over him. Either way, pride is what it came down to.

_Well, fine. If she wants that little victory, she's welcome to it. A couple hundred meters? Hell, I could do the whole cliff like this if she were waiting on the opposite side. To be with the woman who was ready to die happy so long as Prox was saved… This is nothing._

He felt his way down, step by careful step. _But if that bitch thinks she's wearing the pants in this relationship, she's got another thing coming._

He made it down to the next ledge, grabbed his clothes, pulled them on, and quickly rubbed his arms to restore some heat to his body. Then he scrambled down, climbing as fast as he could now, determined to beat Karst to the bottom.

END


End file.
